Marit Tingleff Wall Objects 2014

About

Marit Tin­gleff pre­sents new mon­u­men­tal ce­ramic works at Gal­leri For­mat Oslo.

Fa­cil­i­ties in the ce­ram­ics de­part­ment at Oslo Na­tional Acad­emy of the Arts pro­vide Marit Tin­gleff with op­por­tu­ni­ties to ex­plore grav­ity in a long sought-af­ter way. The large ce­ramic works in this show are first mod­elled hor­i­zon­tally. While still wet, they are raised to a slightly in­clined but up­right po­si­tion with the help of large cus­tom-made walls. Clay is a heavy ma­te­r­ial, so due to grav­i­ty’s in­eluctable na­ture, large masses of wet clay will eas­ily sag. Every­one who works with clay strug­gles with this prob­lem, re­gard­less of whether they build ce­ramic pieces or dig clay from the earth. Tin­gleff man­ages to cir­cum­vent this dom­i­nant qual­ity of clay, thus achiev­ing her aim: to have a large ce­ramic work, in a wet state, stand up­right by be­ing bal­anced against a wall. She ‘con­quers’ grav­ity by us­ing it as a tool. Her craft­ing ex­pe­ri­ence is also an im­por­tant part of the process, and she uses her en­tire body weight in the con­struc­tion process. Her feet are tools just as much as her hands. Trans­fer­ring ex­pe­ri­ence from her hands to her feet, she ap­plies even, sta­ble pres­sure to build the large sur­faces. Grav­ity also plays a cen­tral role in the fur­ther de­vel­op­ment of the stand­ing works. Tin­gleff pours colour (earth­en­ware slip) from the top of a work and lets it run its own course down the sur­face. Once again grav­ity is her tool. The colour forms lines and pat­terns of vary­ing thick­ness.

A sec­ond area of Tin­glef­f’s re­search, which is rel­e­vant for sev­eral of these works, cen­tres on cop­per ox­ide: as a colour­ing agent with a long tra­di­tion and ref­er­ences in ce­ram­ics his­tory, it ren­ders the in­tense green colour we as­so­ci­ate with na­ture and lo­cal land­scapes. Cop­per in dif­fer­ent forms has trans­for­ma­tive qual­i­ties that make it chal­leng­ing and ex­cit­ing to work with. At the same time, it is sim­ple, ef­fec­tual and com­mon. Per­pet­u­at­ing a theme pur­sued in ear­lier works, Tin­gleff now treats land­scapes not as di­rect mo­tifs, but as colour and ma­te­ri­als. Clay is a kind of land­scape in it­self; it is dug from the land­scape, whether from near or far away. Lo­cal Nor­we­gian clay is used to colour the works Panel, Standing/ Resting I and II. In pure form, this clay be­come a deep tile-red, but mixed with white pipe-clay, it be­comes paler. Its rich iron con­tent gen­er­ates a spec­trum of colours that makes it un­matched in painterly char­ac­ter­is­tics. The colour’s many qual­i­ties, in com­bi­na­tion with the more ar­bi­trary ‘draw­ing by grav­i­ty’ cre­ate the unique sur­faces of Tin­glef­f’s stand­ing wall-ob­jects.

Marit Tin­gleff (b. 1954) is pro­fes­sor of ce­ram­ics at Oslo Na­tional Acad­emy of the Arts, and is one of Nor­way’s most noted ce­ramists. Her in­ter­na­tional break­through came about when she par­tic­i­pated in the ex­hi­bi­tion Scandinavian Craft Today, which trav­elled to Japan and the USA in 1987-88. She has held many in­ter­na­tional ex­hi­bi­tions, not least at Mars­den Woo Gallery in Lon­don and at Nancy Mar­go­lis Gallery in New York. Her works have been pur­chased by the Vic­to­ria & Al­bert Mu­seum in Lon­don, by De­sign Mu­seum Den­mark, and by Nor­way’s three mu­se­ums for de­sign and craft-based art.