Ernst Gamperl, wood objects
Piet Stockmans, porcelain objects
Art – Design.
In an exhibition from 27 October to 01 December 2011 the Werft 11 Gallery will present work from two of today’s most important vessel sculptors: Ernst Gamperl and Piet Stockmans. Using traditional materials, expertise and innovation these artists produce objects at the juncture where art and design meet in the same creative process.
Ernst Gamperl
Ernst Gamperl’s large minimalistic wood vessels appear archaic, yet his extraordinary craftsmanship and artistry transforms the weighty medium into gossamer objects suspended in space.
For the last twenty years, Gamperl has worked with wood in a kind of dialogue, incorporating branches, twists, cracks and fractures into each creation. Powerful yet nimble, his objects tell the story of a tree’s past, its soil, its weather, its surroundings.
He treats the surface of the wood – through waxing, polishing, fine striations, contrasts of reflective finishes with rough, knotty exteriors – to emphasize the wood’s inherent expressive properties.
Ernst Gamperl was born in Munich in 1965. He lives and works in Vesio di Tremosine, Italy.
Piet Stockmans
Piet Stockmans has combined industrial techniques, a craftsman’s skills and an artist’s mind to create an oeuvre of enormous breadth and diversity, including both studio collections and art objects. His artistic decisions always strive to make felt the basic properties of the medium.
The form of his vessels is always simple, the colours white and blue dominating almost exclusively. His hand-made pieces and limited series place special attention on the artistic process, thematising the traces of their creation.
Stockmans on his work:
"Everything is about fragility. One should not read more meaning into a work than it can contain. The physical experience, the intervention vis-à-vis the material, reveals the beauty of the piece; it proves its aesthetics." Piet Stockmans was born in 1940 in Leopoldsburg, Belgium. He lives and works in Genk.
Opening
Thursday, 27. October 2011 from 18:00 to 21:00
Press kit
press.gamperlstockmans.zip
