Ceramics from Austria: Current trends in MAK
(Museum of Applied Arts/Contemporary Art, Vienna)
For the second time in just a few months, the Museum of Applied Arts in Vienna (MAK) is showing a remarkable exhibition on ceramics (...), or more precisely ceramics as a modern artistic medium.
This initiates a necessary engagement with the material and its possibilities that has long been lacking in Vienna.
On this occasion, five artists were chosen by Katja Miksovsky, the curator of the exhibition. The works do not adhere to traditional distinctions between art and applied arts, but take creativity as their starting point for exploring a range of fresh and exciting issues.
Here, clay as a raw material takes a new role - less constricted in its application, but deployed more imaginatively. As a result, it is perceived in a more distanced way. (...)
Wilfried Gerstel is showing a series of nine wall reliefs, titled “A Helper-in-Need”.
This helper-in-need is none other than Superman, of comic-book fame, a modern-day deus ex machina, giving shelter to people and boosting their self-confidence. But he, together with his good deeds and the speech bubbles, is placed in relation to the auxiliary and patron saints of bygone days.
The artist refers back to the Middle Ages, quoting this world in his works while using a Romanesque language of form, based on the areal conception of space, stylistic representations of elements like ornaments, trees or clouds, and the simultaneity of storylines. His tales, which only seem naive at first sight, also draw on the medieval, and are all populated with tremendously expressive humans and animals.
The first draft for these works is produced on computer by combining medieval art from various sources, and this is then sculpted in clay. Astonishingly, the results Wilfried Gerstel achieves never feel like imitations but always succeed in creating something new from a medieval spirit.
All this is expressed in his manufacturing technique: the bygone world is shown in unglazed clay reliefs, giving the whole series an archaic touch. However, Superman enters the scene in familiar colours- red, blue and a bit of yellow. His image is produced using a transfer foil, which is applied to the pre-fired clay. After that, the whole relief is heated once more at low temperature.
The story is eternally valid and yet contemporary: Superman is fighting man’s greed but starts doubting his mission: “Did I really think I could succeed?” he broods, before dying in resignation with the words: “The Problem, Pa said, is man.”
Through his work, Gerstel conveys something like despair but also hope grounded in superstition or faith. Compellingly so. (...)
Dr. Charlotte Blauensteiner, freelance journalist, in
Kunsthandwerk & Design, Nr. 4, 2005
Ceramics from Austria: Current trends in MAK
(Museum of Applied Arts/Contemporary Art, Vienna)
Dr. Charlotte Blauensteiner, freelance journalist, in
Kunsthandwerk & Design, Nr. 4, 2005