All this week, we’ll be showcasing all things British Ceramics from the world of contemporary ceramics and contemporary ceramic art. Due to the field of British Ceramics’ incredible and vigorous expansion over the years, we felt it was important to highlight some of the major players and their achievements. Enjoy!
LONDON—Reminiscent of Dr. Frankenstein’s laboratory, one is almost grateful Italian designer Matteo Cibic’s latest series of fantastical ceramic and vitric specimens are encased behind glass domes. But rather than being an alien-like potential threat, Cibic’s Dermapoliesis is a nearby future utopia.
An imagined place not linked to technology but instead to organic forms. It is a world with a new flora and fauna that self-produces its own processed materials to meet the needs of the day.
Premiering at London Design Festival, Cibic’s otherworldly creatures from his exhibition with Seeds Gallery London are inspired by the pioneering and obsessive research of naturalist Ernst Haeckel, physicist and zoologist Carl Linnaeus and Luigi Serafini, the visionary and artist, who drew and wrote the encyclopedia of an imaginary world in an indecipherable language, according to Cibic’s artist statement.
Dezeen writes as part of SEEDS Gallery‘s festival satellite, Cibic presented 42 scent-making ceramics in a variety of unusual shapes.
One is made up of a cluster of circles, while another resembles a mini palm tree. Others are adorned with horns, silver bobbles and crystallised forms.
Beautifully displayed on white, bubbly shelves and consoles also custom made by the artist, each organism, called Dermatholos, bring to question the future role of organic forms, including human kind.
All provide a story of possible animal and plant evolutions controlled by the gestures of hypothetical and mysterious artificial intelligences. It is indeed the question of the moment: will the “robotic” intelligences that we have been nurturing for years make us obsolete? Especially now that we have brought them to degrees of consciousness that are in many cases superior to ours. Will there still be a need for us on this planet, which we are persistently filling with artificial intelligences? Will they — along with all the data and information we have fed them — be at our service, or will we be at theirs? Will they embrace the anthropocentric vision that we have defended tooth and nail for centuries, or toss it all away, superseding their “creators”?
One of the consoles stands at the center of the exhibition, displaying 12 larger sculptures. Cibic tells Dezeen he envisions these 12 works will produce knitwear, rubber, plastic and fruit. Cibic has also made three larger sculptures, called Dermamallow, for the production of gum, tar and oxygen.
This is Cibic’s vision of the future, and his organisms are far from alien. They’re are our future organic producers that will live and grow alongside us providing our homes, clothes and food.
“The furniture of the future will grow as plants and they will produce fruit to feed us every day. These are just the first prototypes of a new era.” -Cibic
Related Reads:
http://cfileonline.wpengine.com/architecture-kent-countryside-peg-tile-house-wins-2017-riba-house-of-the-year/
http://cfileonline.wpengine.com/exhibition-vases-vessels-chance-encounters-material-earth-in-brief-three-british-ceramics-exhibitions/
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