Kapsule Ceramic Wall Sculpture by Séverine Digonnet

Kapsule ceramic wall sculpture by Séverine Digonnet Dimensions: W 78 x H 79 cm Materials: stoneware, wood, engobe. Wall collage made of ceramic elements. Stoneware elements glues on a painted wooden stand. Séverine Digonnet I discovered ceramics in 2017 in Kayoko Hayasaki's studio in the heart of the Marais, in Paris. The first contact is a bit awkward, but clay quickly imposes itself on me like an evidence. Wheel-throwing, modelling, casting, I got the opportunity to learn from talented and generous ceramic artists such as Grégoire Scalabre and Nathalie Domingo, both former residents at The Manufacture de Sèvres. Through these techniques, I tame stoneware and its moods. I acquire new, slower, more precise gestures. Shapes, curves, textures, color, light ... I experiment, I discover, I sharpen my eye. As a ceramic artist with a preparatory course in Applied Arts followed by a course in graphic and digital arts, the universe that I have developed has naturally been conditioned by this learning and the acquired knowledge that I have retained from it. If I put the first sketches of my future pieces on paper, it is on my computer that I refine this work of research for shapes and the balance of volumes. Between abstract fluidity and dynamic geometry, my pieces are inspired by the architecture of the 1920s, the design of the 1950s to 1970s, but also pre-Columbian civilizations where stylization was very present in the aesthetics of their art. I started by observing our everyday items made of clay : from tableware to decorative pieces. From that work and in a hyper-schematic synthesis, with the eye of a child, I isolated primitive geometric shapes and recurring common codes : cylinders, half spheres, handles, holes, curves... Basic elements that I have decided to deflect from their traditional use in order to build pieces that no longer look like functional pieces but like sculptures. The combination of these simple primitive elements, with fluid and abstract forms creates stimulating constructions allowing differing interpretations. Clearly set in a spare and minimalist style, sometimes architectural, sometimes figurative or even mechanical, those pieces become singular entities between futuristic structures inspired by the past, contemporary totems or even imaginary figures.