Output details

Mirror Fall Down Mirror Gone Down. An installation of raku-fired ceramic mirrors for Ancient and Modern, London.

Plato's Allegory of the Cave on the one hand, and the lyrics of Captain Beefheart's Mirror Man on the other, informed the thematic development of a contemporary yet archaic 'cave-space' to house works addressing ideas of ephemerality and the search for self-awareness.

The project was distinctive for its inventive application of simple, primitive methods of clay modelling combined with traditional raku firing and lustre-glazes to create an installation for a city-centre contemporary art space. Thematically and technically the project considered the potential of tradition to form a relation with the contemporary and futuristic. Whilst engaging with broad contemporary discourse on the ephemeral, the project made a distinctive contribution to the specialist field of contemporary ceramics and its on-going emergence from a relatively marginalised position to one embraced within the 'expanded field'. It built on Karstieß's previous contributions, e.g. his inclusion in Museum Villa Rot's Red Hot – Ceramics in Contemporary Art (2011/12) alongside those including Richard Deacon, Ai Weiwei and Thomas Schütte.

Either side of a 1.9 x 6m dark anthracite-coloured corridor-like space ten 30 x 40cm ceramic, raku-fired relief "mirrors" were hung: mirrors in the sense that their lustre-glazed surfaces reflected light and they were formed from the finger and thumb impressions from each of the artists hands in a Rorschach-type configuration. This space opened to slightly wider areas in which a central fetish sculpture was placed, each modelled directly by pressing and pulling clay by hand and sharing a similarly reflected form. The works' titles, e.g. Dark Star and Solaris, alluded to the cosmos and the futuristic whilst the natural material and controls of clay and raku echoed primitive, rural technical means, and implied an almost alchemical process.

Dissemination through exhibition at Ancient + Modern (28.6-4.8.2012 http://www.ancientandmodern.org) and limited edition letterpress poster. Reviewed: Sam Sherman, Artforum Oct 2012.