Mårten Medbo | Taxonomy
The exhibition lends its title from the natural sciences, where taxonomy aims to divide organisms into species and subspecies, determine their characteristics, and map out their dispersion. As one of the many legacies of the Enlightenment, taxonomy marks the birth of modern man.
While entering the exhibition space, the viewer is faced by systematically hung objects that seem to await examination, identification, and classification. Objects that seem to reside somewhere on the border between the recognizable and the foreign, the organic and the artificial. The shapes are spherical and abstract. Strange findings that testify to the human curiosity and desire to discover.
Mårten Medbo's path into ceramics went via apprenticeship at a pottery. Throwing has always been central to his understanding of the ceramic field as well as his self-perception as an artist. Even though he early on his in career outruled the tradition of throwing as a part of his artistic practice, he constantly returned to the potter's wheel – but "in secrecy". As a doctoral student in the field of artistic research, he gained a new interest in his own relation to throwing. Attempting to re-evaluate the artistic potential of turning, Medbo set up a framework for his future practice: that thrown objects must serve as a constant element.
The themes explored in the exhibition are of epistemological nature. They're about modern man's self-perception and curiosity – but also about how this curiosity is expressed through a febrile search for and gathering of knowledge, with the ultimate goal of mastering the world for one's own purposes. On a parallel level, the artist acts as the exploratory and curious man, but with a different purpose. The exploration is rather about what can be created within the given framework – and how the practice of throwing might be expressed.
In Taxonomy, gravity makes its presence felt – a factor that undeniably sets out certain limitations when it comes to man's mastery of the world. Medbo's way of working allows him to expose his objects to gravity in their plastic, unfired state. The objects are systematically hung up and allowed to hang so even during the glaze firing, which means that the glazes enhance the gravitational expression.
Mårten Medbo (f. 1964) is one of Sweden's foremost ceramicist and the first Swede to reach a doctor's level in crafts. He has earlier exhibited Christian Larsen/Larsen Warner in Stockholm, Galerie NeC in Paris, and Galleri Thomassen in Gothenburg. Medbo is represented at e.g. Nationalmuseum, Röhsska Museum, the Public Art Agency of Sweden, as well as in numerous private collections in Europe and USA.
