lessISmore #2

BENJAMIN VOGLER – Ceramic Sculptures

“The form of my sculptures often resembles a wave, but rather than depicting the ocean, my aim is to create a sense of flow. Using a limited number of simple materials, like the semi transparent ash glaze, keeps the main focus on the shape of the sculpture.”

Benjamin Vogler is an artist primarily focused on nonrepresentational ceramic sculpture. He graduated from the Ducret School of Art in 2011. Since 2016, he has been working to further develop his skills in Simon Keller’s ceramics open studio.

Benjamin Heidersberger, soundscape

As a media artist and participant at Documenta in Kassel/Germany I became more and more concerned with interactivity and individualized media consumption, the media becoming an accelerated reality with attention grabbing content. On the other hand, the question of how reduced something can be comes together with my meditation practice. What happens between the observer and the observed? So, in continuation of a 40-year-old project I created Pentatonic Permutations, an ambient algorithmic piano composition that I am broadcasting on the internet as a collective listening experience to bring peace of mind.

Pentatonic Permutations is the “soundtrack of the universe”. It creates a mental network of people listening; helping you to find the silence that was, is and will always be, whether you can hear it or not.

https://pentatonic-permutations.de

SIMON KELLER – Mixed-Media Sculptures

“I work with clay, preferably wild clay, and other remarkable objects I find in nature. The less tamed the clay, the more earth-honest is its materiality. Sculpting, painting, dancing, or turning the raw clay on the kick-wheel, intense heat in the kiln will turn it into stoneware. “Let the clay do the work” was the attitude I learned in Japan. A good way to explore gestalt in its infinite manifestations of shape, form, and structure as it is beyond the mere sum of its parts. My work is a journey of alternate takes created in a calculated chaos to intuit the geological metabolism of deep time.“

Simon, son of ceramic artists, grew up in Germany in the castle of Wolfsburg that was home to a vibrant international artist community. He moved to Japan in 1983. Initially just to “check it out” for a year, but got “stuck in the mud”.  His tenure with ceramic artists Daiguji Michiko and Tappo Narui of Endojigama in Mashiko lasted seven years. Returning to the studio in the castle, teaching took an increasingly important place.  He returned to Japan to work with master potter Hosui Fukuda of Mizuhogama (Kumamoto) for an additional  six years in the 1990s. Here, the intuitive less is more way of working with clay came full circle. Born out of this experience was takumi, the art of making, which he has been teaching at the duCret School of Art for the past 10 years and at Mgalleries since 2016. His inclusive experimental performance art Clay Dance merges stillness and motion, clay, slip, pebbles, and sand paintings. Clay Dance has seen  over 30 solo and colab sessions since 2013. Simon is co-founder of Cone9Colab, an artist trio that explores aesthetics and transcendental qualities of wabi-sabi. Adding tea to the mix, in 2020 he began hosting yuzen raku, a free form tea ritual that combines visual, functional and culinary art in a meditation. His ceramic expertise has repeatedly served the new materials review board of New York based Material Connexion. Simon has had solo and group shows in Germany, Japan, the US and the UK. He lives with his wife Christy, a teacher of theater, their son Max, an avid student of theater, and cat Milo in Flemington.

FRANK MAY – Performance Art

I have been fascinated with the concept of what I call “Negative Making,” and it has become a central theme of my work. I would define Negative Making as a reactive process. Referring to the Issac Newton quote “For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction,” my work belongs to the “reaction” side of the equation. I let work “happen” to me. I find it fascinating being a conduit for ambient sources. I use this methodology in sculpture, painting, drawing, photography, installation, performance, design, video, sound, writing, poetry, digital, and conceptual art. My foundational media, the lens in which I see all other media, is clay. Clay transformed my entire way of thinking about making art. The quote by Lao Tzu, “Mold clay into a bowl. The empty space makes it useful” echoes in my thought process. The message I take away from this statement is that the direct isn’t as important as the indirect. The direct forms of these sculptures are generated with an indirect process of letting gravity take over inside and outside the studio.

Frank May (frankmay.net) is an artist, gallerist, and educator. He considers all media his province. Frank is a member of artist groups MOVIS and Co11ective. He is the owner and curator of M Galleries (mgalleries.org), a network of art galleries and studios based in Washington, NJ. Frank has a degree in sculpture from Mason Gross School of the Arts-Rutgers, New Brunswick, NJ (masongross.rutgers.edu). He is currently on the faculty of The Center for Contemporary Art in Bedminster, NJ (ccabedminster.org) and CreateIT Labs (createitlabs.org).