ALLURING NYMPHS
Newly graduated potter Esben Kaldahl is fascinated by humans’ relationship with objects. Nymphs are what he calls his most recent ceramic figures, whose alluring surfaces and textures beckon people to come closer.
– You call your latest ceramic figures nymphs. How did you conceive of that name?
– Nymphs are by nature alluring, and my intention with these sculptures was to create seductive creatures – something that would draw people closer, inviting them to take an intimate look. Many myths have been written about nymphs, and what I like about them is that they are half human, half object: Dryads are trees and oreads are mountains, and so on. The idiom of the sculptures holds the same tension between body and object.
– You’re fascinated by humans’ relationship with objects – collectors, religious objects, fetishism, etc. Why do you find that so interesting?
–The attraction we feel when some quirky object captivates us at a flea market is often very spontaneous. I believe many can recognise that feeling of something speaking to you. I think the chemistry we can experience with an object is pretty wild. It’s a bit like falling in love. I’ve always been fascinated by things and collected all sorts of objects. Over time, I’ve become more aware of what makes one stone more collectable than another. In this way, I’ve learned to appreciate the various qualities of things, such as proportion, shape, texture and colour. My passion for things led me to study pottery, and now I design my own objects. My work still gives me that childish joy of finding a particularly weathered and round stone or a rare card in a pack. Sometimes I feel it when I open a kiln or model a sculpture that I can sense really works.
– What do you think makes us humans gravitate to these objects?
– It’s a basic human instinct to be curious about the things around us.
And it’s also part of our psyche to endow objects with emotional value.
An object might remind us of a person, a feeling or a situation, and even something seemingly worthless can come to have enormous meaning.
– You’ve chosen ceramics as your outlet for expression. Why ceramics?
– Over the years, I’ve been working with many different materials, but there’s just something about clay and the ceramic process that I love.
Clay makes me feel greater freedom to play and experiment than I might if I had to create wood joints with absolute precision. Besides, there is something magical about firing ceramic. In a way, part of my work is left to the kiln. No matter how much you prepare, something unexpected almost inevitably happens when you open the kiln. It’s both wildly frustrating when something you’ve spent weeks on breaks, but then it’s utterly fantastic when you’re handed an unexpected colour or the glaze has developed into something new and strange. Almost nothing beats that feeling.