Object Factory: The Art of Industrial Ceramics

Events / Exhibitions / Product design

Start date: 06-05-2009

End date: 13-09-2009

Country: The Netherlands

City: New York

Location: Museum of Arts & Design (MAD)

A major new exhibition opening at the MAD Museum in New York celebrates the revival of ceramics in art and design today, and explores contemporary innovation in industrial ceramic production.

By Editor Design.nl / 01-05-2009

Showing at the Museum of Arts & Design (MAD) in New York, 'Object Factory: The Art of Industrial Ceramics' is the first major U.S. museum exhibition to survey contemporary innovation in industrial ceramic production and the renaissance of ceramics in art and design today.

The exhibition explores how artists and designers are reviving interest in ceramics through collaborations with industry that enhance and sometimes subvert the industrial process. Object Factory presents works created for leading manufacturers as well as artworks by independent artists and designers. Both non-functional and functional works are highlighted, as are important technological advances in ceramic material that allow for its use in electronic appliances, cutting implements, and other surprising products.

The exhibition is divided into three sections:
Reinventing Tradition explores unique collaborations between long-established porcelain manufacturers and contemporary designers, artists, and ceramists.
Industrial Interference reveals the ways in which mass-produced objects are radically transformed through interventions by artists or designers during the production process, via cutting, breaking, deforming, decomposing and reassembling.
High Tech Design examines advances in ceramic technology.

Object Factory features more than 200 pieces by fifty artists, designers, and industrial manufacturers. The exhibition is curated by acclaimed ceramic artist and designer Marek Cecula and is accompanied by a 100-page, fully illustrated catalogue published and distributed by the Museum of Arts and Design. The exhibition is organized by the Museum of Arts and Design, based on an exhibition originally organized by the Gardiner Museum, Toronto, Ontario, Canada. This exhibition is made possible, in part, through the support of the Mondriaan Foundation, Amsterdam and the Murray and Helen Gruber Fund.

Dutch designers and companies involved include Hella Jongerius, Jurgen Bey, Marcel Wanders, Jo Meesters, Frederik Roijé and Royal Tichelaar Makkum.

Image: Jurgen Bey, 64 minutes cup and saucer, and 144 minutes teapot c. 2003, Photography: Ed Watkins