Still Life, Still Lives

摘要

Looking at the work of the young Danish ceramist Michael Geertsen in exhibitions in Copenhagen, Liverpool and Chicago, as well as in his dusty, atmospheric studio, has made me think hard about how ceramics are displayed. This is because Geertsen's work is, in itself, about display. His work is an interrogation, a questioning of the place that ceramics has inhabited, as well as the place ceramics will inhabit in the future. At thier most basic his ceramics are assemblages of thrown, cut and rearranged forms, glazed in hard primary colours and placed in strange and exacting positions. They exist in a world between the still life and sculpture, the cusp between imagined utility and brokenness. What I find intriguing in Geertsen's ceramics is that they seem to enact many of the most problematic issues facing contemporary ceramics, without becoming bombastic.