Ceramicist Edmund de Waal Explores Dark Side of Danish Artist Axel Salto‘s Work, Raising Questions About ‘Demonic’ Potential of Clay
Wakefield, UK – A new exhibition at The Hepworth Wakefield, “Playing with Fire: Edmund de Waal and Axel Salto,” delves into the unsettling work of Danish ceramicist Axel Salto (1889-1961), prompting artist Edmund de Waal to consider whether ceramics themselves can possess a disturbing quality. De waal, known for his own porcelain installations and family memoir The Hare With the Amber Eyes, was captivated by Salto’s biomorphic, frequently enough grotesque, vessels, describing them as “like nothing I’d seen.”
The exhibition, running until May 4th, juxtaposes Salto’s creations with de Waal’s own, exploring themes of materiality, form, and the subconscious. De Waal’s broader work, currently also on display in “The Eight Directions of the Wind” at The Huntington in Los Angeles (until October 26th), examines porcelain as a “migratory material,” incorporating repaired 18th-century Meissen plates damaged during WWII using the Japanese art of kintsugi – a process that highlights breakage rather than concealing it.
De Waal’s current projects also include a “poetry library” featuring 200 poets who have immigrated to America, described as “a sort of library of sanctuary.” He is also working on a new book based on unpublished correspondence between his grandmother and poet Rainer Maria Rilke, continuing a family history explored in The Hare With the Amber Eyes.
De Waal describes his creative process as “obsessional,” involving a constant “testing out of things” and a focus on “repetition…not trying to make the same thing, but as trying to work out the breath between different things.” He recalls vividly remembering every pot he’s ever made, dating back to his early days as an impoverished artist in Herefordshire.
