View Johannes Nagel’s works featured on Ceramics Now Magazine
“A vessel has as its reference its own stylistic history and the function. To conserve, or serve out or to present a certain content, is an orientation towards basic human needs. The necessity of producing the form in order to protect contents, meets up with the need to express oneself and to consecrate things and attribute a value to them. From the outset vessels were always designed. The forms emerged from out of the technical capabilities, the practical necessities and a sense for rituals. Rituals are the source of civilization and culture. They bestow a form upon what is lacking in design. A shared meaning develops in them, which goes above and beyond what is merely necessary to life and relates towards what is sublime and greater. From the need to represent and pay homage to this, all art has developed.
The rituals have changed, civilization has brought forth many flowers, art is ever the mirror. The manufacture of vessels is a self-evident cultural technique for all of mankind, and analogue to the role of the figure in sculpture, we can maintain that the ritual is the concrete opposite of the vessel.
And so the „vessel“ can today be a theme, in which function and ritual, our own history and the future may be reflected.
Do rituals relate to something sublime? Can they create a shared meaning? What sort of a function do vessels have today?”
“In the original axiom the form follows the function, as the shape which corresponds to the purpose. The functionality in this work is not related to the potential of a thing to be useful, but rather to the logic involved in its manufacture.
The necessary work steps to make a form mould with which objects can be reproduced in porcelain, are subject to specific preconditions. A sort of three dimensional stereotype has to be made in plaster, which forms a closed volume, or receptacle for the liquid porcelain. The usually many-pieced stereotypes must then be capable of being taken apart, so that the model around which they have arisen, and subsequently the reproduced object shall not be damaged.
I interrupt this process before it is finished and use the stereotype incompletely. The function of (pouring) the form is extended. As a fragment it becomes part of the object and forms a threshold, a border, like the frame which separates the picture from the wall.” Johannes Nagel
Johannes Nagel’s C.V. (resume) – View his works
PERSONAL HISTORY
2009 – Postgraduate stipend of the University of Art and Design, Burg Giebichenstein, Halle
2009 – Scottish Arts Council Residency in Cove Park, Scotland
2008-Present – Studio/atelier in Halle (Saale), Germany
2008 (July) – Diploma of fine art/ceramics at the University of Art and Design, Burg Giebichenstein, Halle
2007 – Student exchange with Ohio University in Athens, Ohio, USA
2005 – 2006 – Artist-in-Residence at the Shigaraki Ceramics Cultural Park, Shigaraki, Japan
2002 – 2008 – Student at the ceramics department of the University of Art and Design, Burg Giebichenstein, Halle
2001 – Apprenticeship as a potter with Kinya Ishikawa in Val-David, PQ, Canada
1979 – Born in Jena, Germany
SELECTED EXHIBITIONS
2010 – European Ceramic Context, New Talent, Grønbechs Gård, Bornholm, Dänemark
– „Causing Chaos “, Fife Contemporary Art & Craft, St Andrews Museum , Schotland
– „Das Voynich-Manuskript – eine Künstlersicht“, Grauer Hof, Aschersleben
– „Sommergäste“, Kasino, Höhr-Grenzhausen
– Intonation 2010, Deidesheim
– Zeitkunstgalerie, Halle
2009 – Frechen Ceramic Award (exhibition), 2009, Keramion, Frechen
– „The vessel – the object“ Kunstforum Solthurn, Switzerland
– Sparkassen foundation art award Halle (Honorable mention), Kunstforum, Halle
2008 – „Erwartung 19“, Symposium, Künstlerhaus 188, Halle
– „Archetypen“, Künstlerhaus Arkona, Kap Arkona
– Keramiksymposium Gmunden 2008, Gmunden, Austria &
– Touring exhibition, Europe
2007 – „Keramik der Burg Giebichenstein“, Reinsberg
– Galerie in de Kerkstraat Arnhem, Netherlands
– „Gardens and Shards“, Cube 4, Ohio University, Athens OH, USA
– Zeitkunstgalerie, Halle
2006 – Galerie Keramikum , Darmstadt
– 3 x 4 Zwölf KeramikerInnen aus Halle, Künstlerhaus 188, Halle
– Galerie Marunie, Kyoto, Japan
2004 – „Art meets Science“, Physikalisch Technische Bundesanstalt, Berlin
2003 – „27“, Städtische Galerie, Zwickau
AWARDS
2010 – Runner-up: Architecture related art/ project for the Martha & Maria Hospital in Halle (together with Martin Roedel)
2009 – Frechen Ceramic Art Award 2009
2008 – Runner-up: Architecture related art/ project for the DHL Hub Halle/Leipzig (together with Martin Roedel)
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