Geertsen VERSUS

Geertsen in a dialogue with Kähler ceramics

The exhibition Geertsen VERSUS is a potter’s dialogue with his historical origins. In 15 tableaux, Geertsen juxtaposes his own works with selected pieces from the Kähler family’s expansive product range over four generations between 1839 and 1974. The presentation demonstrates a kinship which is not only reflected in parallels in form, glaze and technique but also in a shared mind-set with roots reaching back to Antiquity. Much of Michael Geertsen’s ceramic art production has been driven by opportunism, based on the notion that everything that preceded the modern breakthrough was ‘bourgeois’ ceramics. After 25 years of working with clay, however, he has now come to acknowledge that most things have already been tried and done, which makes repetition an ever-present factor. The inherent logic of clay and the fundamental explorations of the materials remain the same across time and cultures. It is this collective kinship among potters across the ages that is the exhibition’s focus.

In Næstved Museum’s large collection of ceramics from Kähler’s workshops in Næstved, Geertsen has selected individual works ranging from magnificent showpiece vases, presented at World Fair expositions in the late 1800s and early 1900s, to everyday products and ocarina flutes shaped like animals. The historical pieces are juxtaposed with pieces from Geertsen’s own production over the past 20 years ranging from one-off gallery pieces exhibited in New York to small candlesticks mass-produced in China.

Tableau - Japonisme

Japonisme was a trend in the 1800s. Japan had allowed transnational trade, and everything that came out of this strange country had an influence on Western ceramicists, which led to a keen interest in experimental glazes and in textures and lustre. Geertsen’s japonisme represents a shriller and more synthetic approach, where metallic thingamajigs protrude from the ceramic pieces, skewering the beauty of the glaze.
Tableau - Bleu Royal

The meeting of Blue Standing Object No. 5 and Spring Vase reveals differences and similarities in a deconstructive and historicist approach to ceramics. Geertsen translates Kähler’s flowers and filigree into the Russian constructivist Suetin’s characteristic dots. In Geertsen’s interpretation, the spring girl’s breasts turn into Jean Paul Gaultier’s famous stage outfit bra for Madonna.
Tableau – Machine Age

Heater from Kähler, which at first glance has some likeness to Geertsen’s Grey Object. While Kähler’s object serves a practical purpose, Geertsen’s object is a sculptural comment on the impossibility of industrialisation.
Tableau – Red

Despite similarities in form and colour, Red Standing Object and the Elephant Vase also show crucial differences. Kähler’s and Reistrup’s art nouveau inspiration stands in clear contrast to Geertsen’s red object, which is more playfully abstract.
Tableau – Lustre painting

Lustre painting is a ceramic technique that stems from Iraq where it emerged in the early 800s, and it continues to seduce and entice ceramicists to this day – at times resulting in exquisite craft objects, at time to utter kitsch.
Tableau – Double glaze

In the mid-1920s Jens Thirslund developed his black/white ‘double glaze’ with its characteristic texture, which stemmed from exposing lustre to an acid bath. Thirslund probably called it ‘double glaze’ to dupe his competitors. Geertsen’s double glaze is a coloured glaze with white over-glaze. Both techniques involve a loss of control, where the ‘kiln god’ reigns supreme.
Tableau – Narrative

Karl Hansen Reistrup’s Thor and Midgard Serpent represents the interest in the old pagan myths during the historicist period, while Geertsen’s formal blue disc study is void of narrative content.
Tableau – Animals

In workshops at all times and all over the world, animals have been a regular part of the product line. Piggy banks and ocarina flutes shaped like animals were once highly popular gift items. Kähler’s piggy bank animals were and have remained collector’s items. Geertsen’s animals emerged initially as fragmented sculptures put together of wheel-thrown components. They took on an unintended likeness with animals or creatures, although they all began as form studies.
Tableau – Stacks

Geertsen’s combined objects reflect a fragmented world view, where the components of the individual object send the beholder both back in time and into the future. Hammershøi’s stacks, by comparison, more closely resemble what they are: jars in jars and thus ‘more is more’.
Tableau – Profile

The objects explore the use of profile templates, in Geertsen’s work in the form of a monkey and a self-portrait, in Hammershøi’s design in an echo of 18th-century turned works in wood and bone.
Tableau – Classic

From the late 1800s, neoclassicism was the height of fashion. Ceramic workshops like Ipsens Enke and Hjorth put out highly successful neoclassic pieces. Here is an example that Kähler too ventured into neoclassicism, albeit with limited success.

Geertsen’s neoclassicism reflects a desire to return to the ceramic roots in a contemporary context where anything goes.
Tableau – Livelihood

Advertising ashtrays, gift items and similar objects from various periods throughout the history of the Kähler factory – combined with Geertsen’s prototypes and counter-models. Everyday objects that promote turnover and help pay the bills.
Tableau – Dishes

The two black-and-red dishes featuring, respectively, Thor and the Midgard Serpent and St. George and the Dragon represent a historicist interest in the old fables about the struggle between good and evil. Geertsen, on the other hand, is a child of postmodernism and deconstructivism, which claims the breakdown of the grand narratives. Here, we find a formal disc study, most closely akin to the minimal art of the 1960s.
Tableau – Stringency

The works represent Michael Geertsen’s and Nils Kähler’s emphasis on a stringent and dry approach to wheel-throwing.