The association between ceramics and art is longer than average. It is a friendship born in the past centuries, and this fusion of water, earth and creativity has evolved through various modalities.

Ceramic artists of the 21st century are proving that this artistic medium has high conceptual and functional potential, attracted by its versatility, sensuality and its role as a platform for provocation.

From ceramicists who maintain ancient and traditional techniques, to those who discover radical ways of pushing materials beyond their limits. These pioneers and pattern-breakers are the shapers of the avant-garde in ceramic art

Ceramics has sometimes lost its function of use, such as that of precious tableware or indicator of social status, while remaining a privileged mirror of artists’ creativity.

The exhibition intends precisely to witness and investigate this fascinating vitality.

During her artistic development Cristina Fiorenza was always a scrupulous observer of the social dynamics of art, who, in her artistic practice, has always combined countless techniques in a very free way. In most of the media which Cristina Fiorenza interacted with, the material always assumed an essential role, but it´s in the working process of ceramics that the material found its maximum expression in the artist’s poetics. More specifically, the progressive approach to ceramic processing brought the artist closer to the sculptural language, leading her to explore new possibilities for handling raw materials. But it is thanks to the intuition of redefining part of the technical principles of traditional ceramic processing, such as firing and the use of glazes in firing, that Cristina Fiorenza’s ceramic artifacts acquire a valuable particularity. The artist works with clays, obtaining objects with rough surfaces, which are covered with different layers of particular enamel; in response to multiple firings and depending on the project, this glaze can take on the appearance of bubbles or craters. The work, which could seem formally finished, becomes something else, precisely because of the crumbling process of the glazes, which marks new aesthetic interweaving on the surfaces.

CABANAmad GALLERY

RUA DA MISERICORDIA 66 1dto - 1200-273 LISBON 
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