Incollect Magazine - Issue 3

Issue 3 96 www.incollect.com The real turning point in the United States, “was when ceramics became an aspect of dealer booths at Art Basel Miami about five years ago,” says Robert Aibel from Moderne Gallery. “Design Miami was meant to be the show at which ceramics were shown and sold, but art galleries at Art Basel Miami became aware of the increasing interest of their clients in ceramics. Some dealers began to present ceramics as art and sculpture thereby justifying higher prices as out of the category of accessories.“ Paul Donzella agrees with Aibel and Vingault and is furthermore baffled that it has taken so long for ceramics to achieve more mainstream market success. “It’s been amazing to see the rise in interest in ceramics over these past years, as it is long overdue. It’s crazy that it has taken so long for studio ceramics to garner real interest from both interior designers and collectors. It seems that now that people’s eyes and interests have tuned into these objects, there is a real hunger for them!” Commissions have also become an important part of the market. Maison Parisienne was one of the first art galleries in France to specialize in showing ceramics as art and today work with many interior designers who want to integrate ceramics into their interior design. “We recently collaborated with a London-based interior designer on a Scandinavian project that required custom ceramic and metal sculptures by Caroline Wagenaar, says Florence Guillier-Bernard, founder of Maison Parisienne. “For another collaboration with an interior designer, we provided porcelain and hemp sculptures by Bénédicte Vallet for a seaside home in the Hamptons.” T his is my guilty pleasure,” says Los Angeles art dealer Peter Blake, speaking about his ceramics collection that includes pieces by artists Otto Natzler, Axel Salto, Charles Krafft, Jerry Rothman, Ken Price, Manuel Neri, Peter Voulkos, and Robert Arneson, among others. “I have been collecting ceramics since the day I opened my gallery in 1993 and I just love them.” He then adds, “This is not something that I tend to sell either, it is just for me, for my own pleasure.” Blake is fairly typical of ceramics collectors — in a word, obsessive, driven by a love of the material, clay, as much as the endless varieties of glazes, surface treatments and creative forms. “Ceramics is really rich in terms of the Natalia Khlebtsevich Heritage International rt Gallery Natalia Khlebtsevich incorporates ceramics into her art, including chamotte, glaze, overglaze decals, and fired painting. Her sculptures are rigorously abstract in form and in content, generally geometric ith a noticeable resemblance to monumental forms by Vladimir Tatlin, El Lissitzy and other Russian Constructivist artists, though this may be purely coincidental given she as born, lives and orks in Mosco . In 2009 and 2011 she as nominated for the prestigious Kandinsky Prize.