Dust and mist
Labor / BUDAPEST (Hungary)
16.05.2017 – 21.05.2017

Vases, plates, dripstones, crystals and mountains; objects that appear as relics of an unknown, remote culture, as mementos of a fossilized moment. Similarly to the touch on soft clay, that becomes solid during the firing of ceramics, here the fluid state and soft thoughts are petrified.
In reality these artefact-like objects do not have their own history; the fractures and cracks are not results of use of many years, the dripstones and small rocks were not created by nature, the cliff was not washed by rain. These objects only imitate their own history, and thereby they create space for us to look at them differently, to really stare into the empty gaze of a ceramic vase, or look between the cracks of a broken plate.
Fractures and mendings appear as an emphasized element of the exhibition. The ceramic works of Sári Ember and Zsófi Szemző do not hide these damages, but see them as inseparable or even accentuated elements of the objects. The philosophy related to Kintsugi, a Japanese technique of mending ceramics and porcelain, highlights the blemishes and imperfections, and considers the importance of change. Fractures and damages are important part of the life of the object. Kintsugi technique repairs broken ceramics and highlights the joints with gold.
In this exhibition the birth and damage of the objects appear with equal importance. One object is not more accentual then the other. As in archeological findings, these ceramics appear on a mutual platform, where things are interchangeable; soft clay with ceramics, gold dust with household dirt, living with lifeless, intact with fractured, dust with mist.

Curated by Borbála Szalai

Courtesy of Labor and the artists