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Exhibitions — 2018
Fernando Casasempere
Natura Morta
23 November 2018 – 2 February 2019
Fernando Casasempere:
Natura Morta
Installation view
Photo: Peter Mallet
Fernando Casasempere:
Natura Morta
Installation view
Photo: Peter Mallet
Fernando Casasempere:
Natura Morta
Installation view
Photo: Peter Mallet
Fernando Casasempere:
Natura Morta
Installation view
Photo: Peter Mallet
Fernando Casasempere:
Natura Morta
Installation view
Photo: Peter Mallet
Fernando Casasempere:
Natura Morta
Installation view
Photo: Peter Mallet
Fernando Casasempere:
Natura Morta
Installation view
Photo: Peter Mallet
Fernando Casasempere:
Natura Morta
Installation view
Photo: Peter Mallet
Fernando Casasempere:
Natura Morta
Installation view
Photo: Peter Mallet
Fernando Casasempere:
Natura Morta
Installation view
Photo: Peter Mallet
Fernando Casasempere:
Natura Morta
Installation view
Photo: Peter Mallet
Fernando Casasempere:
Natura Morta
Installation view
Photo: Peter Mallet
Fernando Casasempere:
Natura Morta
Installation view
Photo: Peter Mallet
Fernando Casasempere:
Natura Morta
Installation view
Photo: Peter Mallet
Fernando Casasempere:
Natura Morta
Installation view
Photo: Peter Mallet
Fernando Casasempere:
Natura Morta
Installation view
Photo: Peter Mallet
Fernando Casasempere:
Natura Morta
Installation view
Photo: Peter Mallet
Fernando Casasempere:
Natura Morta
Installation view
Photo: Peter Mallet
Fernando Casasempere:
Natura Morta
Installation view
Photo: Peter Mallet
Fernando Casasempere:
Natura Morta
Installation view
Photo: Peter Mallet
Fernando Casasempere:
Natura Morta
Installation view
Photo: Peter Mallet
Fernando Casasempere:
Natura Morta
Installation view
Photo: Peter Mallet
Fernando Casasempere:
Natura Morta
Installation view
Photo: Peter Mallet
Fernando Casasempere:
Natura Morta
Installation view
Photo: Peter Mallet
Fernando Casasempere:
Natura Morta
Installation view
Photo: Peter Mallet
Fernando Casasempere:
Natura Morta
Installation view
Photo: Peter Mallet
Fernando Casasempere:
Natura Morta
Installation view
Photo: Peter Mallet
Fernando Casasempere:
Natura Morta
Installation view
Photo: Peter Mallet
Fernando Casasempere:
Natura Morta
Installation view
Photo: Peter Mallet
Parafin is delighted to present its second exhibition by the renowned Chilean artist Fernando Casasempere (born 1958), a sculptor working with ceramics. Formally and technically innovative, Casasempere’s work explores ideas of landscape, architecture and history but also proposes a profound sense of impending environmental collapse. Conceptually Casasempere’s use of earth and clay and his concern with nature and ecological issues connects him to artists associated with the Land or Earth Art movement, but Casasempere works out of a different cultural tradition, being profoundly inspired by the Pre-Columbian art and architecture of Latin America.
Trained as a ceramist, Casasempere’s profound knowledge of his materials – including both porcelain and stoneware – has allowed him to demand from it seemingly impossible results, creating combinations of clays that traditionally cannot be fired together, building structures on the verge of disintegration, and drawing colours and glazes from unusual sources such as relaves, the waste products from Chilean copper mines. Through precise modulations of ingredients, time and temperatures, Casasempere has made important contributions to the development of new possibilities in ceramics.
For this new body of work, Casasempere worked with a batch of clay that reacted in unexpected ways and thereby required him to yet again explore new strategies, for example using carving for the first time. The resulting series of wall sculptures, Natura Morta (2018) incorporate still life elements such as bowls and pots, but also evoke ancient gravestones and burial sites. The forms of pottery, architecture and sculpture are here combined in a unique dialogue between material and technique that questions an understanding that has long cast out pottery from contemporary art. Displayed on a conveyor belt the contrast between the handmade and organic objects and the mass-produced and industrial is enhanced.
In the lower gallery Casasempere presents a new series of Salares – hybrid objects that are neither painting nor sculpture but share the characteristics of both. They are made of clay that Casasempere has imported from Chile and has subsequently layered onto large felt panels to create abstract images evocative of the landscape the materials come from. His use of felt references that of Joseph Beuys and suggests an earth in need of regeneration. Shown alongside the floor-based installation of Mortars (2018), the title of which references both building material and a vessel for grinding food and medicine, and which is evocative of an archaeological dig uncovering the remnants of an ancient civilization, we are left with the uneasy feeling we might be witnessing a scene yet to come.
Selected Works
Fernando Casasempere
Natura Morta 8
2018
Porcelain and stoneware
67 × 58 × 33 cm
Victoria & Albert Museum
PFN01885
Fernando Casasempere
Natura Morta 8
2018
Porcelain and stoneware
67 × 58 × 33 cm
Victoria & Albert Museum
PFN01885
Fernando Casasempere
Natura Morta 8
2018
Porcelain and stoneware
67 × 58 × 33 cm
Victoria & Albert Museum
PFN01885
Fernando Casasempere
Natura Morta 1
2018
Porcelain and stoneware
67 × 63 × 15 cm
PFN01877
Fernando Casasempere
Natura Morta 1
2018
Porcelain and stoneware
67 × 63 × 15 cm
PFN01877
Fernando Casasempere
Natura Morta 2
2018
Porcelain and stoneware
69 × 62 × 24 cm
PFN01878
Fernando Casasempere
Natura Morta 2
2018
Porcelain and stoneware
69 × 62 × 24 cm
PFN01878
Fernando Casasempere
Natura Morta 2
2018
Porcelain and stoneware
69 × 62 × 24 cm
PFN01878
Fernando Casasempere
Natura Morta 5
2018
Porcelain and stoneware
66 × 57.5 × 10 cm
PFN01879
Fernando Casasempere
Natura Morta 5
2018
Porcelain and stoneware
66 × 57.5 × 10 cm
PFN01879
Fernando Casasempere
Natura Morta 9
2018
Porcelain and stoneware
68 × 63 × 12 cm
PFN01882
Fernando Casasempere
Natura Morta 9
2018
Porcelain and stoneware
68 × 63 × 12 cm
PFN01882
Fernando Casasempere
Natura Morta 10
2018
Porcelain and stoneware
63 × 73 × 13 cm
PFN01883
Fernando Casasempere
Natura Morta 10
2018
Porcelain and stoneware
63 × 73 × 13 cm
PFN01883
Fernando Casasempere
Natura Morta 3
2018
Porcelain and stoneware
70 × 63 × 10 cm
PFN01884
Fernando Casasempere
Natura Morta 3
2018
Porcelain and stoneware
70 × 63 × 10 cm
PFN01884
Fernando Casasempere
Natura Morta 6
2018
Porcelain and stoneware
72 × 66 × 12 cm
PFN01886
Fernando Casasempere
Natura Morta 6
2018
Porcelain and stoneware
72 × 66 × 12 cm
PFN01886
Fernando Casasempere
Untitled (Wall Series)
2017
Porcelain and cobalt
86 × 82 × 16 cm
PFN01729
Fernando Casasempere
Mortars
2018
Stoneware
Dimensions variable
PFN01890
Fernando Casasempere
Salar de Uyuni
2018
Clay and india ink on felt
100 × 180 cm
PFN01840
Fernando Casasempere
Salar de Punta Negra
2018
Clay and india ink on felt
100 × 180 cm
PFN01841
Fernando Casasempere
Salar de Coipasa
2018
Clay and india ink on felt
100 × 180 cm
PFN01842
Fernando Casasempere
Salar de Atacama
2018
Clay and india ink on felt
100 × 180 cm
PFN01844
Biography
Full Biography (PDF)
Fernando Casasempere has been based in London since 1997 and his work has been exhibited internationally since the 1980s. In 2016 he was the first artist to be given the entire Museu Nacional de Bellas Arts in Santiago, Chile for a solo exhibition. Other recent solo presentations include ‘A Death’, Parafin (2015), ‘Out of Sync’, Somerset House, London (2012) and ‘Falla Ideologico’, Museo de Arte Contemporaneo, Santiago (2012). In 2018 Casasempere was included in ‘Ceramics Now’, the important annual survey exhibition at the Museo Internazionale delle Ceramiche (MIC) in Faenza, Italy.
Casasempere’s work is in important public collections including the Victoria & Albert Museum, London, the Museu Nacional de Bellas Artes, Santiago, Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Harvard University Art Museum, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, Contemporary Art Museum, Osaka, Musée des Arts Decoratifs, Paris and MIC, Faenza. The artist lives and works in London.
Casasempere’s forthcoming solo museum shows include Casa América, Madrid (2019) and the Museum of Fine Arts, San Diego (2020).
Issuu Exhibition Catalogue (Free)
Parafin produce a digital catalogue for each exhibition available to view and download on Issuu.
Publications