I create vessels and three-dimensional collages using ceramics. My exploration is the encounter between contrasting materials, processing techniques, structures and images, which I relate to each other both associatively and intuitively. I am passionate about the processes of creation. On the one hand, these are subject to factors beyond my control, such as the mixture of glaze and porcelain melting over the ceramic structures during the firing process, leaving specific motifs in its wake. On the other, they are controlled very precisely with carvings in coordination with surrounding images.

Combined with haptic glazes and reliefs, the photographic image plays an important surface role. The photographs from my everyday life as a designer and traveller convey a mood, a memory or factual information. The heat in the kiln causes these images to be permanently burnt, faded and sometimes even twisted or warped. The resulting details reveal small worlds and scenes, and set the stage for fantasies.

Despite obvious contrasts in structure and material, it is my intention to create holistic entities redolent of a kind of harmony. They offer to the eye of the observer a visible animation of the material, a poetic elsewhere.

in Zusammenarbeit mit der Fotografin Katharina Lütscher.

Das Künstlerinnenduo beschäftigt sich mit den organischen Prozessen der Natur, an deren Wandelbarkeit es sich in Ihren Arbeiten orientiert. Im Zentrum steht das Beobachten, Inszenieren und Festhalten von Transformationen: Wie verändern sich Materialien in verschiedenen Stadien, welche Eigenschaften treten dabei hervor – und welche Charaktere offenbaren sich, wenn sie bewusst in Beziehung zueinander gesetzt werden?

Keramische Objekte von Estelle Gassmann stehen gleichwertig neben Algen, Rüben, Kokosnüssen oder Glasnudeln. Sie alle erscheinen als eigenständige Wesen in einer sinnlich konstruierten Welt. Sie lehnen sich aneinander, verschmelzen, «zwinkern sich zu» oder bleiben scheinbar unberührt. Immer wieder entstehen fragile Konstellationen: Flüssigkeiten kurz vor dem Überlaufen, Aufgetürmtes im Moment des Kippens, Festes im Begriff aufzuweichen, Weiches, das gegen die Schwerkraft ankämpft.

Auch das Licht spielt eine zentrale Rolle: Mal scharf grafisch, mal weich modellierend, hebt es Strukturen hervor oder lässt sie verschwimmen. Schatten lösen sich von ihren Objekten, beziehen sich auf benachbarte Formen, auf farbige Tücher und deren Falten – und entwickeln sich zu eigenständigen Figuren. So entstehen Bilder mit märchenhaft bewegter Atmosphäre – ein fluides Gefüge, das zum Eintauchen einlädt.

Estelle Gassmann und Katharina Lütscher arbeiten situativ und reagieren auf ihre jeweilige Umgebung. Sie verwenden lokale Materialien, Pflanzen und Lebensmittel, die direkt vor Ort verfügbar sind, und lassen sich im Arbeitsprozess von diesen leiten. Jedes Objekt – ob selbst gestaltet oder aus der Natur entnommen – besitzt eine eigene Qualität und seinen spezifischen Platz in dieser fein austarierten Welt.

Poster zum Kaufen

I create vessels and three-dimensional collages using ceramics. My exploration is the encounter between contrasting materials, processing techniques, structures and images, which I relate to each other both associatively and intuitively. I am passionate about the processes of creation. On the one hand, these are subject to factors beyond my control, such as the mixture of glaze and porcelain melting over the ceramic structures during the firing process, leaving specific motifs in its wake. On the other, they are controlled very precisely with carvings in coordination with surrounding images.

Combined with haptic glazes and reliefs, the photographic image plays an important surface role. The photographs from my everyday life as a designer and traveller convey a mood, a memory or factual information. The heat in the kiln causes these images to be permanently burnt, faded and sometimes even twisted or warped. The resulting details reveal small worlds and scenes, and set the stage for fantasies.

Despite obvious contrasts in structure and material, it is my intention to create holistic entities redolent of a kind of harmony. They offer to the eye of the observer a visible animation of the material, a poetic elsewhere.

Openwork ceramic pieces – plastic baskets. In search of a solid material to add to porcelain pieces I came across cheap plastic baskets manufactured industrially with similar structural principles such as those mentioned above. The baskets become flexible by partially cutting them out and letting them adapt to porcelain bowls using simple techniques such as inserting, tightening and fitting their structures.

In the 17th and 18th centuries it was common to produce splendid and curious table decorations made of sugar tragacanth for dinner receptions in order to excite the imagination and to inspire the conversations among the guests. Sugar tragacanth objects look similar in appearance to the noble and in those days not yet manufactured porcelain.

In the middle of the 18th century, porcelain gradually replaced the highly appreciated, rather fragile, table decorations out of sugar tragacanth which with the commercialisation of sugar-beet was no longer valuable. In this regard it was my intention to produce the long forgotten sugar tragacanth and to display it in interaction with its former competitor, porcelain.

I use the patterns of openwork porcelain pieces to press sugar tragacanth through them. I leave some processes to chance, others are controlled and stopped deliberately using varied devices. The original porcelain structure is the starting point of the tragacanth formations.

I create vessels and three-dimensional collages using ceramics. My exploration is the encounter between contrasting materials, processing techniques, structures and images, which I relate to each other both associatively and intuitively. I am passionate about the processes of creation. On the one hand, these are subject to factors beyond my control, such as the mixture of glaze and porcelain melting over the ceramic structures during the firing process, leaving specific motifs in its wake. On the other, they are controlled very precisely with carvings in coordination with surrounding images.

Combined with haptic glazes and reliefs, the photographic image plays an important surface role. The photographs from my everyday life as a designer and traveller convey a mood, a memory or factual information. The heat in the kiln causes these images to be permanently burnt, faded and sometimes even twisted or warped. The resulting details reveal small worlds and scenes, and set the stage for fantasies.

Despite obvious contrasts in structure and material, it is my intention to create holistic entities redolent of a kind of harmony. They offer to the eye of the observer a visible animation of the material, a poetic elsewhere.