VIVIAN VAN BLERK
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There is no there there.
Gertrude Stein
Photographs are of models built, decors arranged, collages composed or of just a fleeting moment. After the photograph is taken, its temporary model is dismantled, destroyed or recycled. The moment has passed.
The original gone, our only access to that vanished place is through the photograph.
The photograph tantalizes. It is a door to a world where the viewer's imagination is engaged. One might wonder what happened before and what will happen next. That which hides in the shadows or lies just outside the frame is the artist's gift to the viewer's fancy.
Vivian van Blerk, Paris 2016
I began making ceramics in Lebanon in 2017. Temporary constructions for photographs become finished pieces. Even as durable sculptures , the fictions created remain sealed beneath the brilliant screen of ceramic glaze and remain mysterious, silent and removed from us in time and in space and scale, unattainable like worlds seen through photographs.
Paris 2019
Archipel
Avec « Archipel » Vivian van Blerk imagine toute une nouvelle série d’îlots formés d'éléments d’architecture, véhicules abandonnés et autres ruines, derniers témoins de la présence de l’homme sur terre, envahis par les restes de nos déchets mais aussi nouvellement colonisés par toute une faune et une végétation aussi bien terrestres qu’aquatiques.
Ces nouveaux micro écosystèmes sont parfois reliés entre eux par des bancs de méduses assurant ainsi une nouvelle solidarité animale.
La notion de temps n’a plus aucune importance, la notion de bien ou de mal non plus.
Pascal Odille
Expert CNES - Paris, Avril 2022
Ghosts of Futures Past
2022
Between being modeled and finally glaze fired, ceramics enjoy an ephemeral in-between life.
These panted clay sculptures gather in an installation. The moment is captured on photographic film.
Afterwards each piece is fired. The gouache and acrylic paint applied to the clay for the photograph burns away and they emerge from the kiln wearing a new and permanent ceramic glaze.
Whe pieces are dispersed, the photograph remains as a trace of the diasappeared past.
2020 - Miscellaneous months
Clay is such a rich medium, a ceramic artisan can spend a lifetime to discover and use only a fraction of its endless formal possibilities. As an artist coming late to clay, I do not aspire to replicate the patiently acquired craft of a potter, yet neither can I let myself settle into one narrow groove when there are so many potential languages available.
The fifteen months following the giant installation of vanities in Beyond the Vessel have been dedicated to varying themes and forms and other technical approaches, to discover new roads down which I might travel further.
This is also the groundwork to ultimately combine ceramics with photography.
 The Glade / La ClairièreStoneware and porcelain ceramic group |  The Glade (detail)Stoneware and porcelain ceramic group |  The GladeStoneware and porcelain ceramic group. Detail |
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 The Glade"Diorama" Photograph of Stoneware and porcelain ceramic group hand coloured BEFORE FINAL FIRING WHICH ERASED THE COLOUR. |  Le Malade Imaginaire / The HypochondriacPorcelain |  La traversée du désertStoneware. Porcelain elements. |
 Narcissus on the Styx IIPorcelain. Mirror. |  Narcissus on the StyxPorcelain. Mirror. |  Narcissus on the Styx IIIPorcelain. Mirror. |
 Narcissus on the Styx IVPorcelain. Mirror |  In a Dark Forest LostStoneware |  RingsPorcelain |
 Finger RingsStoneware and porcelain |  The Reading RoomStoneware |  Tower of BabelStoneware |
 Tower of BabelStonware |  The Very Thought of YouStoneware |  Adventure in the GardenStoneware urn |
 The MedusesPorcelain wall-mounted applique |  JellyworldEarthenware wall-mounted consol. With porcelain rhino |  The MedusesPorcelain wall-mounted applique |
 JellyworldEarthenware wall-mounted consol. |  Haussmann's IslandStoneware and porcelain |
On the Beach
2019
A fleet of turtle arks carry life and memory across oceans to populate a long-abandoned city.
Curated by Catherine Milner of Messums Wiltshire with Károly Aliotti of Meşher, Istanbul.
ON THE BEACH participates in BEYOND THE VESSEL, an exhibition of ceramics by thirteen contemporary artists at the Meşher Gallery, 211 Istiklal Caddesi, Istanbul, until 22 December 2019. The show then travels to the United Kingdom.
Stoneware, porcelain, photography.
Vanities II and III
Paris and Beirut
Through 2018 I explored the rich vein of formal and narrative possibilities suggested by the human skull as a ceramic vessel.
A high point of this project was the month residency at Bkerzay ceramic center in Lebanon where I was able to create the bulk of the collection exhibited at the annual
Beirut Design Fair.
Vanities I
2017
I caught the ceramics bug in Beirut. Returning to Paris I wanted to continue transforming simple vessels into narrative worlds. But now working alone, I no longer had raw bowls, bottles, cups or vases as bases to work on. impatient to get on and make works, I was not yet ready to learn the patient, precise craft of pottery first.
The solution was in the studio space I share with archaeologists who store all the skeletons excavated from the ancient burial grounds beneath the local church, Saint Lucien in La Courneuve. Having already photographed and drawn some of the more intact skulls, I found them not difficult to model acceptably in clay.
So my basic vessel was the skull. It brings with it a reminder of mortality and of the memories and feelings of life that cling to our remains. It has an outside and an inside on which stories can be told.
Vanities I culminated in an exhibition at the Wunderkammer in Brussels in December 2017.
Beasts of Beirut
2017
My introduction to ceramics came in April 2017 when invited to collaborate with Katya Traboulsi, multimedia artist, and Hala Matta, ceramicist, at Namika Atelier in Beirut, Lebanon. I modeled relief sculpture on forms built by Hala which were then glazed by Katya.
We worked in various stoneware clays and once in Raku clay.
