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Fluid Function
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.
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Embedded Stories 2015
Peripheral visual phenomena – that’s what the shimmering, pressed-flat sweet papers are, together with all the other shiny pavement findings which have an aesthetic all their own. Accompanied by squashed, colourful flowers, which recall classical floral motifs.
These photorealist subjects are the elements with which the designer decorates her bedlinen and corresponding porcelain collection. An idiosyncratic archive of motifs, scattered there lightly and randomly it seems.
The beauty of these narrative arrangements is generated in different ways. Here it’s the natural fall of folds in the bedlinen which pushes a single motif into the limelight. Then there your eye is drawn under the white duvet and it’s an inconspicuous sweet wrapper or other treasure on the colourful patterned sheet which is brought into focus. The porcelain collection pushes this brilliant game with aesthetics even further, allowing disorientatingly opulent, arabesque scenarios to emerge.
With their poetic-surreal visual language and a conspicuously vibrant design, the bedlinen and porcelain collection by Estelle Gassmann are much more than everyday products.
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Bowl Formations
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.
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Schalengewächse
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.
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Diplom 2006
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Tableaux
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.
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Nature Ludique
Colloboration with photographer Katharina Lütscher. Digital C-print 37.5 x 25cm. Wooden box frame. Edition 7+2 AP. 1200 CHF.
Kreatürlich wirken die Gebilde von Estelle Gassmann, animiert von der Lichtführung der Fotografin Katharina Lütscher. Beide Künstlerinnen inszenierten gemeinsam die Auftritte von Unikaten aus Porzellan, Zuckertragant und Plastik, garniert mit Lebensmitteln, die eigenmächtig ihre Bühnenräume ausloten, deren Dimensionen aus den Interaktionen zwischen Schärfe und Unschärfe entstehen.
Schatten emanzipieren sich von den Objekten, beziehen sich auf deren Nachbarn, auf die unterlegten farbigen Tücher und deren Falten, und mutieren schliesslich zu eigenständigen Figuren. Jedes Bild ein Fluidum märchenhaft bewegter Atmosphäre, eine Einladung zum Eintauchen.
Nature ludique weckt augenblicklich Erinnerungen an Gesehenes, z.B. an Gemälde des „Goldenen Zeitalters“ der Niederlande, an die „natures mortes“, die scheinbar reglosen Stillleben und deren Vanitas-Symbolik, an Portraits vornehmer Bürgerinnen und Bürger, schwarz gekleidet mit weisser Halskrause, und sogar an Allegorien der Laster; denn so könnte der bodenlos gierig schaufelnde Eimer verstanden werden.
Nature ludique entführt die Fantasie in die Epochen des Barock und des Rokoko, für deren prachtvolle Speisekultur das Porzellan zum Synonym wurde. Fürstliche Gastgeber liessen ihre Tafeln mit umfangreichen Services decken und mit komplexen Aufsätzen dekorieren, um ihre verwöhnten Gäste zu amüsieren und zu galanten Konversationen anzuregen. War es zur Zeit des Barock den Konditoren anvertraut, faszinierende Tafelaufsätze aus Zuckertragant, der zähflüssigen Mischung aus teurem Zucker und dem gummiartigen Saft des Schmetterlingsblütlers Tragant, zu modellieren, so lag es seit der europäischen Erfindung des Porzellans in den Händen der Manufaktur-Künstler, die Tischgesellschaften in Staunen zu versetzten.
Das Porzellanservice avancierte seit dem 19. Jahrhundert zum bürgerlichen Statussymbol. Angereichert mit Andenken wird es solange vererbt, bis die Nostalgie endgültig verblasst und der Flohmarkt ruft. Dort stellt Estelle Gassmann ihren internationalen Fundus zusammen: jedes Teil “Geschmacksträger” seiner Zeit. Die durchbrochenen Ränder oder Wandungen, einst Stilmerkmal des naturverbundenen Klassizismus, benutzt sie als Schablone für die Modelliermasse aus Zuckertragant. Das Motiv des Geflochtenen greift Estelle Gassmann mit Sieben aus Plastik wieder auf, mit denen sie Porzellangebilde ergänzt. Einzelstücke inspirieren sie zu gewagten Aufbauten aus Porzellanmasse vermischt mit Glasurpulver, die sie solange auf die Feuerprobe stellt, bis sich zufällig, experimentell, fragil Verlaufendes erhärten kann. Weil Zuckertragant, Porzellan und Plastik während des Herstellungsprozesses ihren Aggregatzustand ändern, können sie sämtliche Formen annehmen.
Die Fotoserie “Nature ludique” spielt auf naturgesetzlich bevorstehende Veränderungen der Zustände an: Überall labile Situationen, die ihre Ad- und Kohäsionskräfte gegen das Überlaufen, Abrutschen, Aufweichen, gegen die Schwerkraft mobilisieren: Carpe momentum!
Text: Birgit Liesenklas
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Glass
Fotos: Anna-Katharina Wittmann
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Tableaux Made in Jingdezhen, China
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.
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Sceneries for Food and Images
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.
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Growing Structures
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Esteller
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