“Trying and trying again. I can’t think of a better way to define my work than the declaration of Franz Schubert when asked about his idea of musical composition: “I just finish one piece and begin the next”.
I don’t have any idea of what inspiration is; in any case not something I care much for. I believe in work, in the unavoidable need an artist faces to make something, very specific but ultimately impossible to understand fully. A sort of fate more than a decision or a choice.
For me it is clay. Into this relation with clay should go somehow everything I care for: poetry, literature en general, music, geometry, knots, maps, astronomical charts, curved mirrors, crystals, languages, the work of hundreds of artists (some ceramists among them), labyrinths, the games of chess and billiards, seeds, and a long etcetera that would take pages to list and would certainly leave aside many things, probably the most important ones.
Our memory preserves every single experience and processes it in a conscious and an unconscious way to produce what one can. Not what one wants but only what one can. In this impulse towards the Ithaca one would like to reach lies for me the secret of creativity: trying endlessly to express in a clearer way what I want to express.
After forty years of working with clay, after so many pieces thrown and treated in the so many different ways I have discovered along the years, I realise now how this last years have been a time of recapitulation, a time to concentrate all that I have developed, trying to get to the most essential. And this means, as usual, starting with a thrown form, a cylinder again. Finishing a piece and beginning with the next. And always finding something new, endlessly.”
Gustavo Pérez
Born in Mexico City, in 1950.
Ever since he began working with clay in 1971, his work has been devoted essentially to investigate and develop the creative possibilities offered by the use of the potter’s wheel. Even though there have been some series of pieces made with other techniques, the wheel continues being the center around which turns everything he makes. From pottery to sculpture.
All along his more than 40 years of production, he has developed several series of pieces that he himself has defined as “Open Form”, “Drawing on ceramics”, “Wounds”, “Cuts”, “Reconstruction”, “Folds”, “Compression”, and in the last years, after the Compression series, a sort of synthesis of all the previous periods. In every case it has been a systematic as well as a very ludic investigation of the infinite ways to manipulate clay after it has been given a basic form on the wheel. This basic departure form being many times a simple cylinder. This process continues open and becomes richer and wider as he tries different ideas. Because as he often says, it can be endless.
His work has been exposed in many galleries I the world and is also part of many collections in museums in Mexico, USA, Europe and Asia. He works both in his studio in Xalapa, Veracruz in Mexico, and in the studio of Brigitte Pénicaud in France. And is often invited to give lectures and workshops or to participate in production projects.
From 2007 - 2010 he was invited to work at the Manufacture Nationale de Sèvres, where as artist in residence he realized several series of pieces in porcelain.
Member of the International Academy of Ceramics since 1994. And since 2006 member of its council.
Read moreGermany
Keramikmuseum Westerwald, Höhr-Grenzhausen
Korea
Icheon World Ceramic Center, Kyonggi
Denmark
Keramikmuseet Grimmerhus, Middelfart
United States
Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), Los Angeles, California
Long Beach Museum of Art, Long Beach, California
France
Cité de la Céramique, Sèvres
Musée Palissy, Saint-Avit
Greece
Musée Benaki, Athens
Hungary
Nemzetközi Keramia Studio, Kécskemet
Japan
Musée d’art de la Préfecture de Saga, Saga
Musée de la Fondation du Shigaraki Ceramic Cultural Park, Shigaraki
Latvia
Musée des Arts Décoratifs et du Design, Riga
Mexico
Centro Cultural de Arte Contemporáneo, Mexico City
Museo Carillo Gil, Mexico City
Museo de Arte Moderno, Mexico City
Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Oaxaca, Oaxaca
Museo de Arte de Querétaro, Querétaro