Michael Kaysen: Look Long, Look in Vain
@ 65GRAND
1369 W Grand Ave, Chicago, IL
Opening Friday, January 23rd, from 6PM - 9PM
On view through Saturday, February 21st
65GRAND is pleased to present Look Long, Look in Vain, Michael Kaysen’s first exhibition with the gallery.
On view is a selection of vessels from Kaysen’s ongoing investigation of a specific form. This bottle form is something the artist goes back to over and over again. It is a starting point, a jumping off point. Most simply it is the idea of a bulbous body with an almost closed off opening.
The form comes from Gertrud & Otto Natzler, Austrian potters who emigrated to California and who helped raise ceramics to the status of fine art. “When I was younger I saw this bottle form the Natzler’s played with. It intrigued me. It’s a difficult form. It’s visually simple but it’s deceptive. It’s difficult to execute and it allows you this endless variation,” notes Kaysen.
The artist’s approach to glazing is in direct contrast to the regularity of the form. “I visually try to cut across the form. There isn’t a lot of asymmetry in patterning, generally. Most of the surface treatment is usually to accentuate the form,” Kaysen goes against it. “I think of the glazing as bisecting. I also try to do this up and over the piece. This is where the idea of ‘cutting across’ the piece comes in.” He doesn’t use patterns, but the way Kaysen glazes his pieces, you are led around them visually. It puts an extra level of importance on the fact that what we are looking at is not flat. “You can’t look at one side and get it. You have to deal with it as a thing in the round.”
The artist explains that his interest in the bottle form extends, “to the fact that it contains space. It carves out a form in space. It’s not something you put things in. What does it do? It holds space.”
Michael Kaysen lives and works in Hammond, IN and teaches ceramics at Calumet College of Saint Joseph. He received his BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
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