Excellence Prize of the KICB 2019(Ceramics as Expression)
Aneta Regel, Poland
These odd-looking sculptures with extremely irregular shapes and rugged surfaces are made of ceramics and stone. Aneta Regel creates abstract sculptures imitating humans or objects found in nature. Belonging to the last generation who can vividly remember the post-communist era in Poland, the artist is interested in transformation from one state to another, conflicts, and the process of change in people and society. She creates change in surfaces and intricate textures by repeatedly drying and re-firing her works made of clay and stone and coating them with multiple layers of glazes. By combining stone from nature and ceramics, Aneta Regel induces the audience to respond psychologically to her works that look grotesque but elicit curiosity.
Review
Aneta Regel who grew up in northern Poland has many memories of the natural environment of her hometown, an impressive and rugged rural landscape dotted with huge boulders, round and smooth rocks full of fossils, and even anthropomorphic forms dating to the Ice Age. Her current works now more than ever embody the transcend forces of nature.
The infinite subtlety and melancholy feeling that Aneta Regel paradoxically manages to elicit in us through the power created by combining clay and rock. This is indeed "psychoanalytic" work in that it seeks to make us sally forth into the wild forest of our own subconscious. This forest is a shadowy place that we reject as taboo, a place we more often refuse to enter, to recognize, and to search within ourselves.
International Committee KICB 2019
Frédéric Bodet
Former Conservator of Musée National de Céramique à Sèvres
