This exhibition of works in ceramic and wood, two primaeval materials
that have informed the human journey from prehistory to the present day, is the
first exhibition from the We Are the Museum series. In it, we want to
showcase the members of our staff who are also well-established artists. With a
large body of works on paper and an extensive record of exhibitions, Igor
Ravbar is one of them.
The interaction of clay and wood, impressions of one in the other, and
extrapolations of visual emphases from one to the other constitute the main
thread of the artist's explorations of their interdependence. The title,
Impressions, can be understood as his fleeting encounter with the properties
and structure of the two materials. On the other hand, making impressions or
imprints, designing and building something by hand is the technique he used in
making the exhibits.
Igor Ravbar’s ceramic artefacts bring to mind the minimalist aesthetic
of Japanese ceramics, whose main feature is a simplicity of sorts, if not
primevality. This feature could be described as an authentic relationship to
clay, a relationship one can imagine prehistoric potters to have had. Such a
relationship allowed ceramists to use the material’s properties, such as
colour, texture, firmness, pigment impurities, and glaze viscosity, for their
products to speak for themselves without any additional embellishment. Japanese
ceramists believed every material had the innate ability to grow into an
adequate shape, and the ceramist's job was to trigger it. The same way of
envisioning artistic creativity can be seen in iconic examples of Scandinavian
design.
Understood as both clay and wood’s inherent ability to grow and develop,
this is the seed that the artist succeeded in drawing out of the two materials,
juxtaposing them as structures that are completely different while being
closely connected and, in fact, each other’s impressions.
The exhibition comprises four sets of works. Titled Cube, the first set
combines two basic forms, a cube (wood) and a cone (ceramics). Very similar in
texture, they share the same ornament proportionally cut out of and inserted into
the two elements of the whole to imply their piecing together or the impression
of one part in the other. The second set, Log, is reminiscent of traditional
Scandinavian glass and ceramic design in wooden moulds to create a bark-like
texture. Again, the two works are a positive and a negative that combine into a
single whole. The third set, Impression, is, in fact, an impression of one
round shape in the concave surface of the other, while the last one, 49, is
comprised of markedly decorated Eastern teacups of various shapes that share
the same denominator.
Igor Ravbar’s works on display stand out for their precise sense of substance
and the ability to highlight complementary features of the two used materials,
wood and ceramic, to draw attention to the primevality of using archetypal
materials in art. This is, without doubt, a significant contribution to
contemporary artistic expression.
/Mateja Kos/
The
exhibition comprises four sets of works: