NO CONTROL

Tove Storch, Untitled, 2020. From far away it feels industrial. Up close, not really. The plaster surfaces bloom and streak in pink and violet between stacked aluminum plates.

What keeps pulling me back is the way the piece holds and gives at the same time. The structure is there, but pushed. The frame holds, but it doesn’t make it out unscathed. That tension feels familiar.

In ceramics, structure doesn’t work alone. Glaze, clay, and heat push each other. The surface isn’t passive. It’s where the transformation happens. You create the form, apply the glaze, load the kiln, and then you leave. The conditions are set. The materials do the rest.

Storch helps sharpen something I already knew. A lot of what I’m after in WRECKED WORKS lives in that same tension. I don’t want surfaces that feel sealed off from process. I want to see where the pressure was. I want to feel where the material answered back. A structure that holds. A material that doesn’t stay obedient. A surface that shows what happened. That’s the kind of tension I look for.

Photographed at ARoS Aarhus Kunstmuseum, Aarhus, Denmark.