Morten Løbner Espersen
Vacui # 2263 (2021)

The only time I ever actually dreamt of ceramics was the night after a visit to Morten Løbner Espersen’s studio and seeing this cylinder on his table, partially hidden behind a collection of other, more colourful pieces. The dream featured the surface of the cylinder, which melted and sort of filled everything. I heard a sound that was a mix of whooshing and sizzling, and I saw the different glaze layers appear as colour and texture. I saw the object emerge as matter! And woke up chuckling at myself: surely, this makes me a super-nerd. 

Vacui # 2263 makes little display of itself. It combines a few, simple formal means into a precise and tangible form of materialized poetry. It is quintessentially ceramic. It simply could not be any other material. The object began as a wedged lump of clay, which after being centered on the wheel was drawn out to form a base and then raised to form a thin wall. Diameter x height. The wall defines an interior space, an inside and an outside. 

After drying, the cylinder was bisque-fired and then brushed with two glazes. When the firing reached the top temperature, the two layers melted into each other, the lower layer melting into the top layer, and in the cooling process, this moment of becoming was captured in quiet, hissing, vibrant materiality. The chemical transformation of the clay itself caused a slight deformation that now contradicts the ideal geometry. 

I feel like writing that we are in the midst of an eternal universality, where form meets matter and comes into the world as material, as tangible reality. But surely, every object is tied to its time and context? Can an object be ‘timeless’? ’Universal’? In 2024? That is probably not possible, and yet, that is my main impression of this object. The cylinder represents a break from a frantic world, where we are constantly opining and opining; struggling and struggling with each other and with ourselves. This cylinder seems to want to leave all this turmoil behind. Just stand there, like a centre in a soughing, whooshing dream about the very moment of creation. (GJ)