Tessa Eastman

Disorder as a delight of the imagination

April 13 - May 16, 2019

Tessa Eastman. Erupting Red Midnight Cloud Cluster, 2019, glazed stoneware, h. 21x 46 x 44 cm

This is the first solo exhibition in France of the young London artist Tessa Eastman, who is already at the forefront of the Anglo-Saxon contemporary art scene. Inspired by complex organic forms seen through a microscope or clouds in the sky, her colorful sculptures have attracted the attention of many professionals and won several awards. Tessa Eastman's work impresses with originality, talent and, above all, a bold approach to form. Starting with clay, and using a variety of hand-building techniques, the artist explores the singularity of the development of natural phenomena. The cloud that inspires her refers to cosmogony, to the pictorial history of the landscape or forges the link between sky and earth. Nimbus, stratus, cumulus, cirrus... this non-topic, although it can be a metaphor for so many things, allows the artist to concentrate all the more on the heart, even the body, of the material.
In her approach, the artist seeks contrasts: softness and hardness, order and chaos, geometry and irregularity. The pieces come to life through her particular perception of form and glaze, and a great deal of time is devoted to research and experimentation with enameling. Matte or glossy, rough or smooth, warm or cool glazes are used to give depth of character to each piece. The grouping of his works highlights these contrasts and creates a dialogue between the pieces.

Tessa Eastman in Connaissance des Arts

Tessa Eastman's ceramics play with the idea of order or chaos, with effects of transparency or a materiality that stops the gaze in its tracks. But the British designer (born in London in 1984) encourages individual interpretation and an almost "primal" feeling when faced with her pieces. There's no need for over-precise definitions when the imagination is the one that tells the rest of the story. If Tessa Eastman's work is made up of a set of contrasts, it also reveals how the study or view of others can transform a practice. Coming from a family of artists, particularly in the fields of architecture and jewelry, she has always drawn, and discovered ceramics at a very early age. She immediately fell in love with the touch and the demiurgic power of ceramics, but initially produced more utilitarian objects. For herself,
it's a question of considering and deepening the very definition of the medium and its notions of container and content.
At the time, her colors were bright and bold, and the finishes were highly figurative, traveling into the marine world of the octopus, rereading the tradition of the birthday cake, the theme of mother and child, or watching the seasons go by. But in 2013, Tessa Eastman decided to further her training at London's Royal College, opening up the possibility of a completely different reading of her body of work. While her first ceramics date back to 1997, the professors who supervised her at the time gave her the confidence she was lacking. They allowed her to delve deeper into her fascination with the human race and the multiplicity of its relationships. By taking less refuge on the side of playfulness, she can inaugurate a new global theme, the experimentation of which she is far from having completed. Here again, to avoid too many questions and remain delicately discreet, she will indicate that these are clouds.
With its infinite forms, this polymorphous entity is one of the main allies of those who love the Rorschach test. The cloud refers to cosmogony, the pictorial history of the landscape or the link between sky and earth. Nimbus, stratus, cumulus, cirrus... this non-subject, although it can be a metaphor for so many things, allows the artist to concentrate all the more on the heart, even the body, of the material. [...]
Marie Maertens
Art critic and curator,
Excerpt from the exhibition catalog, March 2019.