Essay by Peter Pakesch
The ceramics by the American artist Liz Larner are multi-layered: their shape and weight are reminiscent of antique tablets, the richness of color of the glazes gives them the effect of a painting, while the often torn and broken surfaces tell of the process of their production. Breaks can also be read as a theme from the titles of the works: caesura as a pause between two halves, subduction based on the pushing of two layers of earth in plate tectonics, calefaction as the heating of added minerals that crystallize or dissolve in the clay, porcelain meltas renewed wear and tear on the already designed material. Above the cracks, however, lie the deeply shimmering surfaces of Larner's precisely nuanced colored glazes.
The book shows this work as part of an exhibition in 2016 at the Max Hetzler Gallery in Berlin. Two strands come together: Larner's personal development, whose conceptual interest led her to ceramics around the turn of the millennium, and the role that the material plays in the history of modernism through artists such as Picasso, Fontana, Asger Jorn and Peter Voulkos.
Published by Holzwarth Publications, 2017Hardcover, 53 pages, fully illustratedDimensions: 11 1/2 x 11 inches (29.21 x 27.94 cm)
