thisiscolossal: Loops and Coils in Bright Gradients Grow from Claire Lindner’s Ceramic Sculptures

A photograph of a colourful sculpture, which appears like an organic plant-like form.

All images © Claire Lindner, shared with permission

Vine-like colorful coils of material overlap in Claire Lindner’s latest sculpture collection, which blurs the line between organic and human-made forms. Each piece has a vibrancy and motion designed to push the possibilities of the medium. “My ideas are guided by the evocation of the living,” she tells Colossal. “I try through movement and color to combine images of vegetation, the animal or the mineral world, the body as if everything was made of the same substance.”

Lindner plays on oppositions when designing her ceramics to “create a visual confusion that triggers our imagination.” She creates tensions between aesthetics and textures, including soft and hard, light and heavy, and attractive and repulsive.

Each piece is made from glazed stoneware, and before the artist starts working on a new sculpture, she envisions the “movements, flow, and colors” that make up its base and core. But as she works, she lets the material inform her choices. “Once in the making, I let myself be guided by the specificity of clay,” she explains. “I have to be attentive to its tensions, folds, and plasticity in order to make a form that will ‘flow’ and tell an interesting story.”

Lindner attended the Ecoles des Arts Décoratifs Strasbourg and developed an interest in clay from studying its organic and malleable characteristics. She compares her process to metamorphosis: how after time, one form changes into another. “Unlike glass, metal, wood, or 3D printing, working with clay felt like a prolongation of the body. It can be apprehended safely. It is soft and malleable,” she says. “It also has the ability in its process to keep all of the imprints of its manipulation, just like skin you can see the stretch marks, feel the tension, and play with the limits.”

In spring, Lindner will exhibit her work in a solo show at Maab Gallery in Milan and a group show at the MOCO La Panacée Museum in Montpellier. She is currently working on larger-scale pieces, which you can follow on her website or Instagram. (via Ceramics Now)

A photograph of a colourful sculpture, which appears like an organic plant-like form.