Special Exhibition

---

Alison Britton OBE (* 1948)

Sculpture, architecture, and painting: in Alison Britton’s work these three spheres have been combined to create singularly impressive and memorable objects which have often make you forget that they are made of clay. But of clay they are and have, more or less strongly, almost always been reminiscent of jugs and bowls. The idea of the vessel, however, underwent stages of deconstruction similar to those we can witness in the works of architects like Frank Gehry or Daniel Liebeskind and it is her unique ability to simultaneously present in her objects the two-dimensional world of painting and the three-dimensional of architecture. There is a strong tension in her work between outside and inside because her forms and shapes do not just surround space but also express its volume. Herr pots do not tell stories: they are suggestive, gestural, abstract, ornamental and emerge from intensely lived moments of imagination.

Gordon Baldwin OBE (* 1932)

The language of forms Gordon Baldwin has invented and refined in his career is unmistakable. His objects of clay are abstract, clear, mysteriously elegant, invented and yet reminiscent of what the artist’s eye can see and his hands feel in the world of minerals like crystal, rock and pebble under changing skies and on the edge of the sea. Starting from a preference for hermetically closed forms, coil-built or from slabs and fired many times to make them acquire the hard, stony surface they must have, today Baldwin’s objects have openings, marks and patterns mostly geometrical, incised but also in painterly colours. His monumental shapes explore the infinite relationships between volume and line white and colour, space and surface, thickness and thinness, smoothness and raggedness. He creates whole families of shapes round, tall, erect, and composite objects which combine these elements and qualities. The way he works is processual and imaginative and makes his objects documents of his subtle dialogues with his materials.

opening hours:

11 a.m. – 6 p.m. (except October 5 and October 10)
The opening speech will be held by Dr. Rüdiger Joppien, Museum of Applied Art, Hamburg

exhibition site:

The exhibition will be homed at the German American Institute (dai), Sofienstr. 12, D-69117 Heidelberg