Through Tongue and Soil
Laurence Sturla
Laurence Sturla
GIANNI MANHATTAN is pleased to present ‘Through Tongue and Soil’, Laurence Sturla’s first solo show with the gallery.
Laid across three plinths are cross sections of an impossible and dissected machine. This brackish remnant has been high fired, burnt and blistered. After the firing process, the components are submerged in a high saline solution for a prolonged period of time. These high fired ceramics, despite their vitrification, are porous and susceptible to osmosis when they sit in salty water. As they absorb the saline solution, the water slowly evaporates and the works develop salty strata, reminiscent of tide lines or artifices retrieved near a coastal dig.
Measuring the water content of ceramic fragments is a long tested tool in archaeology to determine the age of clay artefacts. Sturla’s artificially soaked ceramics contaminate this process, rendering them tainted and ambiguous.
Laid across three plinths are cross sections of an impossible and dissected machine. This brackish remnant has been high fired, burnt and blistered. After the firing process, the components are submerged in a high saline solution for a prolonged period of time. These high fired ceramics, despite their vitrification, are porous and susceptible to osmosis when they sit in salty water. As they absorb the saline solution, the water slowly evaporates and the works develop salty strata, reminiscent of tide lines or artifices retrieved near a coastal dig.
Measuring the water content of ceramic fragments is a long tested tool in archaeology to determine the age of clay artefacts. Sturla’s artificially soaked ceramics contaminate this process, rendering them tainted and ambiguous.
26.11.21—26.02.22
GIANNI MANHATTAN, Wassergasse 14, 1030 Vienna
> Installation views
GIANNI MANHATTAN is pleased to present ‘Through Tongue and Soil’, Laurence Sturla’s first solo show with the gallery.
Laid across three plinths are cross sections of an impossible and dissected machine. This brackish remnant has been high fired, burnt and blistered. After the firing process, the components are submerged in a high saline solution for a prolonged period of time. These high fired ceramics, despite their vitrification, are porous and susceptible to osmosis when they sit in salty water. As they absorb the saline solution, the water slowly evaporates and the works develop salty strata, reminiscent of tide lines or artifices retrieved near a coastal dig.
Measuring the water content of ceramic fragments is a long tested tool in archaeology to determine the age of clay artefacts. Sturla’s artificially soaked ceramics contaminate this process, rendering them tainted and ambiguous.
Laid across three plinths are cross sections of an impossible and dissected machine. This brackish remnant has been high fired, burnt and blistered. After the firing process, the components are submerged in a high saline solution for a prolonged period of time. These high fired ceramics, despite their vitrification, are porous and susceptible to osmosis when they sit in salty water. As they absorb the saline solution, the water slowly evaporates and the works develop salty strata, reminiscent of tide lines or artifices retrieved near a coastal dig.
Measuring the water content of ceramic fragments is a long tested tool in archaeology to determine the age of clay artefacts. Sturla’s artificially soaked ceramics contaminate this process, rendering them tainted and ambiguous.
Sturla’s ceramic cadavers are located in the muddy zone where distinctions between recent histories, archeological pasts and mythology continue to disintegrate as they are reformed into new ontologies through acts of dredging and reclamation. Sturla’s alloy of mangled aesthetics and defunct utility illustrate the fallacy between technological precision and our (in)ability to reconstruct and reimagine the past.
Laurence Sturla (b. 1992 in Swindon, UK; lives and works in Vienna). Recent and upcoming shows include Staying with the Trouble, Carbon12, Dubai (2022); Stone Dreams, Loggialoggialoggia, Munich; PK // K, Haus Wien, Vienna; Drawings, Gianni Manhattan, Vienna (2021); NOI, Museion, Bolzano (2019). Sturla teaches ceramics at the Kunstuniversität Linz.
Laurence Sturla (b. 1992 in Swindon, UK; lives and works in Vienna). Recent and upcoming shows include Staying with the Trouble, Carbon12, Dubai (2022); Stone Dreams, Loggialoggialoggia, Munich; PK // K, Haus Wien, Vienna; Drawings, Gianni Manhattan, Vienna (2021); NOI, Museion, Bolzano (2019). Sturla teaches ceramics at the Kunstuniversität Linz.
