Artikel "Ceramics: Art and Perception" No. 38/1999
The most difficult part
of describing Paula Bastiaansen's
work is trying to classify
it.
She works with porcelain,
but after this obvious statement
it is hard to proceed. She
makes objects that at first
sight vaguely seem to resemble
seashells or some other
organic object but, on closer
inspection, don't resemble
anything at all, and certainly
not seashells.
The objects are thin, almost
transparent and consist
of a kind of tentacles (yet
not quite tentacles) that
wave in the air (or are
they solid matter?).
Paula Bastiaansen herself
is matter of fact about
her objects.
When asked for a deeper
meaning, she is silent for
a few seconds, then confesses
that she finds thes kinds
of questions difficult.
What is ther to say, if
the object won't speak for
itself?
Later she states categorically
that she is nothing but
a ceramist, that trying
other disciplines of art
simply do not appeal to
her. She feels some kinship
with glass, but only because
it is transparent, not because
of some inherent value of
or interest in the material.
The only certain thing is
her fascination with transparency
that becomes clear while
she describes her long,
complicated and hazardous
production process that
in the end is only meant
to instill her object with
their near transparent,
immaterial look.
Her objects
are carefully conceived.
First of all, she makes a detailed two-dimensional drawing of the object, which she then cuts
up. She then takes a rough stoneway mould and tries to apply her drawing to three dimensions inside
it, so that she folds the paper object until a good shape has been reached. When she is satisfied
with the basic design, she starts mixing the colours with porcelain. She then makes a plaque of
bone china porcelain with slices of coloured porcelain alternating with with neutral coloured
porcelain. This plaque she subsequently cuts up to make the thin slivers of alternating coloours
that form the 'ribs'of her objects.
Virtually anything can
go wrong in this part of
the process.
Since the plaques of porcelain
are a few millimeters thick
at most, they become too
dry or too humid easily
so they have to be covered
with wet rags. Experience
has taught her that the
porcelain slivers she makes
should be one cm wide at
most, or they will lose
their structure and the
object will crack in the
kiln. In addition, the coloured
porcelain dries and shrinks
at a faster rate than the
pure white porcelain.
Bastiaansen has found that coloured porcelain, especially black, should be slightly thicker than non-coloured. Since the difference should only be 0,1 mm, it is clear that this, too, may go wrong. Assuming that everything has gone well, she now fashions the object itself. This is work which has to be executed quickly: she has to form it correctly within five minutes or the porcelain dries too much and will crack. After that, she puts it in the kiln to be fired at 1260°. Then the object is finished.
Bastiaansen's object are extremely fragile. In fact, they even look sturdier than they are.
This fragility, which is
the translation of their
immaterial look to the physical
plane, is the key to her
work. Looking back, she
recognises that her present
forms were already apparent
in the objects and drawings
she made at the Art Academy.
Nonetheless she started
her ceramic career with
more conventional forms
such as bowls and amphorae.
From there, she slowly worked
her way to the objects she
makes today.
She searches
for the essence of the immaterial
with patience and care.
Although the roots of the
objects are clearly the
bowl form, she has gone
beyond that form in her
career. At the moment she
comes nearer to materialising
the immaterial than other
ceramists. The viewer instinctively
understands: her objects
emanate fragility and a
sense of unrealness.
Although at first nearly everyone associates the objects with something natural, something from the sea, an oyster or shell maybe, these associations are quickly lost. Her objects are quite simply indescribable: one has to see them, maybe even touch them lightly, to understand and accept them as they are. From her graduation in 1983 until the present time, she has had many exhibitions. At first mainly in the Netherlands and Germany, but from 1998 onward also in Japan and in several European countries. Gallery Carla Koch showed her work in the Millennium exhibition of 1999 and a solo exhibition is planned for January 22 till February 19, 2000.
Bastiaansen (born in 1953)
was educated at the Department
of Ceramic Design of the
Academy for Art and Design
in Den Bosch, the Netherlands.
Article
by Peter Paul Koch
Peter Paul Koch is a writer
on the arts from Amsterdam.