In her endeavour to render cloud formations, rotting tree stumps and glossy glaze lakes, Bente Skjøttgaard (b. 1961) has been challenging the possibilities of clay for more than four decades. Her continuous effort to capture nature’s fleeting phenomena in ceramic form has resulted in numerous sculptures with a distinctive and unique expression.
In this exhibition, Bente Skjøttgaard invites us on a personal journey through her body of work. In a display of 14 themes, she recounts her artistic development, works, experiments and exhibitions, illustrating how one idea often naturally has led to the next. From her graduation from Kunsthåndværkerskolen (School of Arts and Crafts) in Kolding in 1986, we follow her early explorative experiments with the balance between function and aesthetic that led to her design of organically shaped bathroom experiments during the 1990s, among other outcomes.
In Glaze Pieces, she is drawn in by the endless possibilities of glaze, followed by the emergence of her uniquely personal universe of form during the 2000s, based on the ever-changing phenomena of nature. In complex sculptural constructions of drifting thunder clouds, submarine jellyfish or piled-up tree branches, she pushes her material to the limit in an effort to capture fleeting natural phenomena in tangible form.
Today, Bente Skjøttgaard is recognized as one of our leading ceramic artists, moving effortlessly between the delicate and fragile and the powerful and fierce. With wild glaze effects and sculptural forms that seem to defy gravity, Bente Skjøttgaard invites us into a very poetic universe of nature’s essence and being that sparks fascination and wonder.