Terra Delft Gallery introduces the Swiss artist Caroline Andrin in the Netherlands with an exhibition from January 4 through February 1, 2014. After an artist-in-residence period in Rome, she has come via Oxford and Montreal to Brussels, where she now lives and works.
Caroline is showing her project ‘SKIN GAME’, which consists of wall pieces and a number of objects on pedestals. Augmented especially for Delft, her collection includes squirrels in white porcelain with a touch of blue, as a historical reference. The transfers for this are originally from the Belgian porcelain factory Royal Bosch.
In her work she researches the process of creating, particularly the technique of design. The objects relate back to the principle that a form carries another form within itself, and that one function elicits the other. Instead of traditional plaster casts, into which liquid clay is poured, Caroline uses leather gloves which she cuts apart and reassembles in another form to create her ceramic accessories. ‘SKIN’ refers to the skin of an animal, a skin which is eagerly worn by humans, and ‘GAME’ refers to playing, but also to another name for wild animals, those which are hunted. Once the objects have been fired, they have a fascinating allure, playing with the ambiguities of material and form. The most obvious location for displaying these pieces might be a country house or a cottage in the woods.
‘SKIN GAME’ started in 2011 and has been developing ever since. The objects form a collection: of an imaginary compendium of beasts of extraordinary appearance. It is a collection inspired by the magical North of Twin Peaks, where nature, man and beast encounter one another in an audacious, sensual and occasionally animalistic interplay.
Etty Walda