CRMCS #1 CRMCS #1
CRMCS #1
11 Nov 2018 - 22 Dec 2018
CRMCS#1. A Selection of Contemporary Belgian Ceramics.
Works by Anne Marie Laureys, Tamara Van San, Robin Vermeersch, Joke Raes, Antonino Spoto, Jan Marechal, Mieke Everaet and Yves Malfiet.
Curated by Kris Campo.
CRMCS#1 is an exhibition that came out of a meeting, but also because of an appetite and enthusiasm for it. When gallerist Elke Helbig of Zwart Huis met ceramicist Kris Campo there was an instant appetite and enthusiasm to celebrate and honour the ceramic arts, their expressive power, their sensuality, tactility, sense of spectacle and the visual richness of clay as an artistic vehicle.
Helbig asked Kris Campo to curate eight contemporary artists. Some of them consciously call themselves ‘ceramicists’, basically meaning they have studied ceramics and mainly work with clay as their artistic medium. Others come from the worlds of painting or sculpture, or more recently even from the conceptual arts, and artists who have gradually started to include ceramics into their work alongside other materials.
The overriding common denominator, though, is that they all see themselves as ‘visual artists’ and work with ceramics as the medium for their art.
CRMCS#1 is made up of around 50 works chosen for the exhibition space based on their colour, shape, and originality and how frivolous they are. Works from individual artists have been combined into one sculptural project.
Nowadays it’s rather unconventional to find works from such diverging angles in one and the same exhibition, let alone seeing them actually combined into a single work. This is precisely how CRMCS#1offers a completely independent view of the place of ceramics in our visual landscape.
Kris Campo (1961) studied ceramics in Antwerp and Ghent. Since 1987 she has been developing her own visual oeuvre and took part in exhibitions and competitions in Belgium and abroad. She worked for fifteen years as a guide in the Royal Museum of Fine Arts in Antwerp and has been a ceramics teacher at the Academy of Sint-Niklaas since 1997. She is also active as an artistic coach for professional and semi-professional artists.