Emily Counts, Daphne Christoforou, Sofie Steegen, Hélène Morbu, Evgenia Kirshstein, Zohar Sally, Thibaut Renoulet, Rémi Bracquemond, Tina Berning & Ellen Meers A brush of ceramics
Elie Schönfeld, art patron and founder of Schönfeld Gallery, has been collecting ceramics since he was 19. So having his own ceramics exhibition was not long in coming. The fantastic fluorescent green and yellow colours of his mother’s Boch La Louviere vases (which would mark the beginning of his 300-piece collection of vases) predicted that that exhibition would be colourful. Moreover, it was clear early on that ceramic work in particular, where painting and experimentation with colour and glaze play an important role, got his preferred choice. And so A brush of ceramics became a colourful collection of work by artists from all over the world who know how to highlight the special medium of ceramics in a unique way.
While exploring the world of ceramics, Elie came across the work of French artist Thibaut Renoulet. Like a true painter, he richly glazes his ceramic masks, busts and medallions, softening the roughness of his stocky characters. His expressionist drawings, designed in a naive imagery, are fused with the ceramics. And young Parisian ceramist Remi Bracquemond, too, paints most of his vases and bas-reliefs with enamel. However, he does not incorporate portraits in them, but figuration inspired by the plant and animal world.
Evgenia Kirshstein, a Russian artist trained as a conservator, uses different (painting) techniques to fuse past and present in her ceramic work. Her jugs are inspired by Ancient Greek pottery and sketch everyday life in a naive, uncomplicated way. Daphne Christoforou from Cyprus also mixes contemporary scenes with iconography from bygone eras. For instance, her vengeful Greek gods test out a ‘Beetle Chair’.
In keeping with the age-old tradition of painting ceramic utensils such as jugs and crockery, gallery artist Tina Berning has been glazing plates as gifts for friends and family for years. This is the first time she is also showing the objects in the gallery. The blue motifs refer to Berning’s drawings, which are unique approaches to the female body in an expressive style. However, they are not mere reproductions of existing drawings, but offer a new interpretation in what the German artist calls a “demanding medium”.
Ellen Meers, in turn, makes beautiful ceramic, mixed media tiles with all kinds of colourful, enigmatic symbols on them. Placed side by side, the symbols tell a story, similar to Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics. Underlying them are anecdotes and memories from her own childhood or stories of friends and family. Equally colourful is the ceramic work of our compatriot Sofie Steegen. A dialogue between colour and materiality gives rise to mostly cheerful and innocent representations. Shaped in simple lines, they seem to be sketches from scratch. American artist Emily Counts’ work is also richly polychromed and often finished with a golden touch. Her objects are rooted in personal memories and have an experimental character through the unique combination of ceramics with electricity, lighting and Plexiglas, among other things.
Experimentation is also what French Hélène Morbu shares with Israeli artist Zohar Sally. Morbu juggles the technical limitations and plastic qualities of clay. With a thorough investigation of colours, she further highlights her vocabulary of delicate textures and severe lines. Sally experiments with moulds in complex profiles that push the clay into a solid form. The result is a series of hollow objects with organic shapes and textile-like textures.
Let A brush of ceramics be your guide on a journey through the wonderful world of ceramics and discover surprising motifs, innovative shapes and unexpected colours and textures.
Roxane Baeyens
- Location
- Brussels
- Date
- —
Selected Images
Selected Images
“Elie Schönfeld, art patron and founder of Schönfeld Gallery, has been collecting ceramics since he was 19”
Artists in this exhibition
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