Artist : Candace Resnick
Genre : Ceramic Artworks
Everyday,
10.00AM till 10.00PM
Location : Jenggala Art Gallery, Jl. Uluwatu II, Jimbaran,
Tel: 703311
Candace Resnick was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, USA, and
she began working with clay thirty-five years ago. Her early
wheel thrown forms utilized decorative techniques involving
added coil and incised designs. Twenty years ago Candace left
utilitarian pottery behind and began creating decorative murals
and sculptural pieces. She works with high fired white stoneware
clay to which she adds colored stains. The colored clay can
either be rolled into thin sheets and appliquéd onto
a background slab, or applied as a slip with an airbrush and
a series of hand-cut stencils. An innovative clay recipe,
which makes use of paper pulp as a reinforcing agent, has
allowed her the freedom to create large, yet delicate pieces
that simulate draped cloth, tropical leaves and fragile, exotic
flowers.
Talking about her exhibition, ‘Pushing Clay to the Limit’,
Candace says: “I realized early on in my residency at
Jenggala Gallery that I would have to be very flexible and
take a new approach with my designs, as the materials I was
working with had vastly different properties than what I was
used to in my own studio. Ceramics is a very complex science
involving not only complicated chemical reactions between
the clay and the glazes, but the added component of the mysterious
firing process. Putting this show together was very challenging
and has forced me to grow more than I would have thought possible.
I have been working in this medium all my adult life but it
continues to humble me. You can never be too sure of yourself.
Where clay is concerned there is always something new to learn”.
Candace’s larger-than-life wall-pieces successfully
explore surface texture, scale and illusion, and she has produced
a unique range of ceramic artworks. The decorative allure
of these works completely seduces the viewer.
Inspired by the costume of a legong dancer, the wall-piece
‘Legong’ depicts the glitter of a metallic Balinese
headdress, sitting atop a swirl of red, purple, orange, green
and yellow silk, on which rest a pair of leather boots. The
swirl of the silk suggests movement. Maybe the dancer has
abandoned the costume in a flurry after the completion of
the dance, yet, the mysterious ‘pixy-like’ quality
of the boots suggest some form of magical disappearance. No
matter the interpretation, the remarkable quality of this
work is the contrasts of texture and color. It is hard to
believe that the metal, silk and leather are all created from
clay. It is an elaborate web of deceit in which clay masquerades
and mimics other surfaces and materials. ‘Prickly Pear
1 & 2’ are assembled from objects of daily use,
such as vases, at something like their normal scale, but which
deny their function. Vases are stripped of their intended
purpose and are ‘transformed’ into whimsical rubbery
cactus bushes, adorned with delicate red flowers. It is an
art of surface and honest deceit, where utilitarian objects
are exploited through the process of abstraction and metamorphosis,
and are deemed worthy of contemplation.
Claes Oldenburg is an American Pop sculptor who reveals the
traits of ordinary mundane objects by blowing them up to gigantic
proportions. This procedure normally entails an alteration
in materials. For example, Oldenburg’s ‘Floor-Burger’
is a larger-than-life sculpture made out of soft material
such as canvas or vinyl, stuffed and stitched together like
cushions or pieces of furniture. Similarly, Candace, in her
works ‘Wall Flower’ or ‘In Full Bloom’,
takes small, simple, delicate flowers, such as peonies or
poppies, and reproduces them in fired, colored, glazed clay.
This is a brittle and indestructible material, and the flowers
are created on a grand scale. Suddenly, we become aware of
the subtleties of petals and stamen. The folds and intriguing
patterns of flowers become more than apparent. A collection
of wall-hangings of huge necklaces, such as ‘Jenggala
Jewels’, are extraordinary. These are three-dimensional
assemblages of clay vases, of various shapes, color and texture,
endowed with the qualities of precious stones, strung together
and hung from the gallery wall. Altered in terms of form,
substance and dimension, these necklaces are divorced from
their normal everyday context and are raised to the status
of autonomous art.
Finally, two wall-hangings, ‘Cactus Tea’ and ‘Pengenbak
Panes’, play with found-objects, molded forms and painted
background slabs. Appearing as a ‘vertical’ table
setting, or a glimpse of a landscape as seen through a window
masked by a vase of flowers, these pieces are neither ‘painting’,
‘sculpture’ nor ‘pottery’, rather,
they are intriguing expanded ‘canvases’ that deal
with illusion and displacement. The irony of teapots, tea-trays
and vases of flowers floating in space are created with an
almost surreal sense of humor.
In her exhibition, Candace has ‘pushed clay to the limit’.
This show has no relationship to the humble pot. Instead,
Candace reveals the potential this medium offers when handled
by an experienced and imaginative artist. Jenggala once again
must be commended for their innovative artist-in-residence
program, which is continually exploring and expanding the
potential of the medium of ceramic art.
