Clayworks - galerie de natris - nijmegen 2013
Bart Drost calls his stay at the EKWC jokingly "a very long Playtime". Play always delivers something on, although at first glance that seems to be not always "useful" or "functional". He discovered that you can do all "nice" things with porcelain and recycled clay like crushing by hand and stomping with bare feet. What the result of that tramping was, is not as random as it seems, because strong depending on where and in what quantity the clay is applied within the designed area. The trial and error, even with color and glazes, yielded on fascinating shapes and compositions, very vulnerable. To make the "sculptures" resilient, it was necessary to strengthen the back of them. That of course had not to not be at the expense of the original image. A wooden plate sawn out in the form of the clay work turned out to be the ultimate solution.
These wooden back plate proved to be the characteristic element of the work: in front of the image Drost places an identical protective plate, now painted in abright color. An abomination to the true ceramist. Seizes Drost here back on his artistic formation schooled as teacher at TeHaTex, Nijmegen, and as avisual artist in the Department of Monumental Textiles of the Rietveld Academy(Amsterdam)? However, the result is amazing: a packed vulnerable plate ceramic, protected, concealed, making curious, a decorated work of art.
The clayworks of Bart Drost ask for an active and curious spectator who wants to besurprised. He must - if he wants to see the art in all its vulnerability - very carefully undress the object. And what's more exciting than that!
Sunday 12 May to 23 June 2013