Gustaf Nordenskiöld
Stockholm, Sweden

Gustaf Nordenskiölds ceramic work deals with issues about functionality, primitivism, natural forces, and perceptible method. He is exploring the field between design, crafts, arts and industrial production. The interest for functionality and the interface between man and the object is central for his ceramic pieces. He creates everyday and unique objects made as a conclusion of natural forces and human refinements. He is trying to counter conventional ideas of beauty by making intriguing and sometimes grotesque works with naturalistic power and personality. The outcome raises questions about the functional aspect of the object, and invites the user to investigate the object with all senses. Is this a cup or is this a sculpture? This aesthetic and philosophical idea differs from the accepted parameters of Swedish studio ceramics and the result questions the Scandinavian minimalism. The method in itself is very important, to use the process of the making as a part of the finished piece. He is leaving traces of the process in the objects, as a memory of its making. By using the hand as a tool, and work with other machines and tools in the same way he is dissolving the order of precedence between man and machine. This is made in a semi industrial process, even though it is extremely handmade. Important is the intrinsic quality of clay, its rawness, fluidity and tactility. Gustaf is using the randomness of nature, the rawness of the material and the mark of the tool, to create everyday objects, that has a poetic value and raises questions about its being and making.