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Almond, Darren: All Things Pass

Almond, Darren: Terminus

Almond, Darren / Blechen, Carl: Landscapes

Andreani, Giulia

Appel, Karel

Arnolds, Thomas

Bonnet, Louise

Brown, Glenn

Brown, Glenn: And Thus We Existed

Butzer, André

Butzer, André: Exhibitions Galerie Max Hetzler 2003–2022

Chinese Painting from No Name to Abstraction: Collection Ralf Laier

Choi, Cody: Mr. Hard Mix Master. Noblesse Hybridige

Demester, Jeremy

Demester, Jérémy: Fire Walk With Me

Dienst, Rolf-Gunter: Frühe Bilder und Gouachen

Dupuy-Spencer, Celeste: Fire But the Clouds Never Hung So Low Before

Ecker, Bogomir: You’re NeverAlone

Elmgreen and Dragset: After Dark

Elrod, Jeff

Elrod, Jeff: ESP

Fischer, Urs

Förg, Günther

Förg, Günther: Forty Drawings 1993

Förg, Günther: Works from the Friedrichs Collection

Galerie Max Hetzler: Remember Everything

Galerie Max Hetzler: 1994–2003

Gréaud, Loris: Ladi Rogeurs  Sir Loudrage  Glorius Read

Grosse, Katharina: Spectrum without Traces

Hains, Raymond

Hains, Raymond: Venice

Hatoum, Mona (Kunstmuseum
St. Gallen)

Eric Hattan Works. Werke Œuvres 1979–2015

Hattan, Eric: Niemand ist mehr da

Herrera, Arturo: Series

Herrera, Arturo: Boy and Dwarf

Hilliard, John: Accident and Design

Holyhead, Robert

Horn, Rebecca / Hayden Chisholm: Music for Rebecca Horn's installations

Horn, Rebecca: 10 Werke / 20 Postkarten – 10 Works / 20 Postcards

Huang Rui: Actual Space, Virtual Space

Josephsohn, Hans

Kahrs, Johannes: Down ’n out

Koons, Jeff

Kowski, Uwe: Paintings and Watercolors

La mia ceramica

Larner, Liz

Li Nu: Peace Piece

Mahn, Inge

Marepe

Mikhailov, Boris: Temptation of Life

Mosebach, Martin / Rebecca Horn: Das Lamm (The Lamb)

Neto, Ernesto: From Sebastian to Olivia

Niemann, Christoph

Oehlen, Albert: Luckenwalde

Oehlen, Albert: Mirror Paintings

Oehlen, Albert: Spiegelbilder. Mirror Paintings 1982–1990

Oehlen, Albert: Interieurs

Oehlen, Albert: unverständliche braune Bilder

Oehlen, Pendleton, Pope.L, Sillman

Oehlen, Albert | Schnabel, Julian

Phillips, Richard: Early Works on Paper

Prince, Richard: Super Group

Reyle, Anselm: After Forever

Riley, Bridget

Riley, Bridget: Paintings and Related Works 1983–2010

Riley, Bridget: The Stripe Paintings

Riley, Bridget: Paintings 1984–2020

Roth, Dieter & Iannone, Dorothy

True Stories: A Show Related to an Era – The Eighties

Tunga: Laminated Souls

Tursic, Ida & Mille, Wilfried

de Waal, Edmund: Irrkunst

Wang, Jiajia: Elegant, Circular, Timeless

Warren, Rebecca

Wool, Christopher: Westtexaspsychosculpture

Wool, Christopher: Road

Wool, Christopher: Yard

Wool, Christopher: Swamp

Wool, Christopher: Bad Rabbit

Zhang Wei (2017)

Zhang Wei (2019)

Zhang Wei / Wang Luyan: A Conversation with Jia Wei

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Liz Larner
Text Peter Pakesch


German / English
Hardcover
28 x 29 cm
54 pages
51 color and 1 b/w illustrations
978-3-935567-91-6
45.00 Euro


Leaf through the book

 


 

The ceramic work of American artist Liz Larner (born 1960) offers many different layers: their form and heaviness are reminiscent of antique plates, in the deep hues of the glazings they are like paintings, while their fissured and often broken surfaces tell the story of their creation. This theme of brokenness can also be found in the titles: caesura suggests a pause between two halves, subduction refers to the collision of tectonic plates, calefaction is a heat experiment in which minerals added to the clay crystallize or evaporate, porcelain melt means putting stress on what has already been created. Above the cracks, though, Larner adds the mesmerizing surfaces of her exactly shaded glazings.

 

The book presents these works as shown at Galerie Max Hetzler in Berlin 2016. Two different storylines meet here: Larner’s own artistic development, where her conceptual interest led her to work with ceramics around the turn of the millennium, and the role the material has played in the history of modernism through artists such as Picasso, Fontana, Asger Jorn, and Peter Voulkos. ““As with Fontana’s and Jorn’s best works,” Peter Pakesch writes in his essay, “ceramic in Larner’s hands becomes a special combination of painting and sculpture, embodying the qualities of both worlds. Approaching ceramics from a background of conceptual analysis, she has always made the case for a deep study of the material and its special characteristics. She may now have arrived at the point at which—beyond the contradictions that always held a special significance in her work—she has achieved a naturalness that allows her a virtuosic play of form, material, and color. With what other material could this have been possible?”

 

MATERIAL AND PAINTING IN SCULPTURE
(excerpt from the essay by Peter Pakesch)


The special relationship between art and ceramic as a material reaches back into prehistory. Clay plays an important role in many early creation myths. And alongside manipulated stones and drawings on cave walls, objects made of fired clay are among the earliest testaments to human creation: the first ceramics. The oldest of them, as far as we know, were figures; only later were the first vessels made. The processing of materials and the skills necessary to do so—the τέχνη (techne), to borrow a term already used by the philosophers of ancient Greece to describe their understanding of art, science, and technology—was very inclusive at the time, linking practical value and theoretical insight, to be understood both functionally and aesthetically. Pandora, made from clay, as a pitcher or a female figure, then brought the achievements, the blessings, but also the curses of all this material knowledge into our world. An intuition of these ambivalences would continue to accompany the arts over time, saving us from falling for shiny surfaces, enabling us to see the inner depths.

 

When we enter the exhibition of American artist Liz Larner at Galerie Max Hetzler in Berlin, we see colorful, rather amorphous objects on the walls and on the floor. On closer inspection, we realize they have been modeled from clay: ceramics, some glazed, others coated in layers of colorful plastic and oil paint. They are artworks that both shine in their unique perfection and do not hide the traces of their creation. These enigmatic bodies confront us in an extremely alluring way. Their meaning does not reveal itself at first glance; their appeal, however, is strong. We thus have to dig deeper when we encounter such works today. We have to think about the meaning of materials in general and of ceramics in particular, about painting and sculpture in rich interaction, but also about the possibility of fundamentally reflecting on creation, questioning the artistic process in an aesthetic discourse…

 

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In collaboration with Galerie Max Hetzler Berlin | Paris