Untitled, 2016-2017, Yaara Oren

What

Stoneware clay, ceramic pigment

Who

Yaara Oren, b. 1982

Why

“The plates offer a playful exploration of ceramics and painting. My art-making centers on painting, yet in recent years I have also turned to creating ceramics, fostering a dialogue between the two mediums. My inspiration comes mainly from my environment and from things I encounter along the way: tin structures, sheets of canvas, layers of peeling plaster, billboards and bars, alongside local elements such as palm trees, domes and arches. These elements are represented in the works in an abstract manner, while resonating with the visual excess and ‘unraveled’ aesthetic quality of the local environment. My art-making unfolds as a stream-of-consciousness composed of images, forms and fragments of reality.
My work is multilayered and combines different material languages, as well as an encounter between flat planes of color and lines. Through these actions, I explore the limits of the medium and the dialogue between painting and ceramics.
In recent years, I have focused on plates which I make out of clay painted using various techniques. The ceramic material, the combination of its natural color and the various powders, rolling it out and etching into the surface, expand the painterly exploration of line and color and offer an additional material exploration of these elements.
The everyday quality of creating functional objects provides me with a sense of liberation and freedom, transforming the plates into sketches of sorts – a fertile field for experimentation and new discoveries. This is an ongoing project in which each plate (100 thus far) is unique, while together they form a heterogeneous material language.”

Where

On display at the Rothschild Gallery, Tel Aviv Biennale of Crafts & Design, MUZA – Eretz Israel Museum, Tel Aviv.