I characterize my exploration of ceramics as an eclectic manifesto. In meta-artistic terms and with

complete naturalness, I cite historical currents and epochs of art, design, and architecture.

Movement as motif is a key mode in my work: energetic, capturing space, unfolding without

resistance. It is a complex encounter between the decorative elements and the sculptural form of

the actual object. The objects appear as pulsating bodies with cylinders, funnels and cones sucked

in and out of their forms. The push and pull calls attention to the fact that this closed sculptural

body has an interior; one that is cut off from the human eye but is nonetheless present as a close

and meaningful active element.

Michael Geertsen

Looking at the work of the Danish ceramicist Michael Geertsen in exhibitions in Copenhagen,

Liverpool and Chicago, as well as in his dusty, atmospheric studio, has made me think hard about

how ceramics are displayed. This is because Geertsen’s work is, in itself, about display. His work is

an interrogation, a questioning of the place that ceramics has inhabited, as well as the place that

ceramics will inhabit in the future. At their most basic his ceramics are assemblages of thrown, cut

and rearranged forms, glazed in hard primary colours, and placed in strange and exacting positions.

They exist in a world between the still life and sculpture, the cusp between imagined utility and

brokenness. What I find intriguing in Geertsen’s ceramics is that they seem to enact many of the

most problematic issues facing contemporary ceramics, without becoming bombastic.

Edmund De Waal