if there is something i really miss on a daily basis, it’s the ability to visit all my favorite telavivian design galleries. i used to pop into my car and just cruz around. moving from one gallery to the other, sprinkling a few coffee shops into the mix along the way. one of the galleries that never ceased to amaze me, and always will, is periscope gallery. their latest exhibition, that just closed last month was into the depth of the surface. ceramist maiyan ben yona’s first solo exhibition.
i realized that maiyan’s intense manual labor must deserve more attention, the way it should be if corona was not around. many more people need to get to know the force of nature that is maiyan.
when i first saw the objects, that were beautifully pictured by the talented aya wind, i wasn’t sure what i was looking at. for a moment i even thought i was looking at well crafted deserts (alon shabo, you made me do that!). while observing the way maiyan operates, i noticed her meticulous aesthetic and attention to each and every string of white porcelain and it took me a minute to realize that i’m looking at a ceramic masterpiece, no less. but if i need to get back to reality, i’ll let galina arbeli, the curator of the exhibition, explain the true meaning of maiyan’s work.
“maiyan attempts to create a new order in the realm of decorations in which she has been working for the last couple of years and to examine what happens to the object (the ornamented) when the shapes, which were meant to decorate it (the function), exceed the surface of the object.
maiyan takes the decoration patterns she uses in her work, removes them from the surface of the vessels they have decorated, and gives them three-dimensional life, sometimes as an independent object of another vessel and sometimes as a three-dimensional decoration adorning a vessel. with this act of disassembling and rebuilding, she changes the general shape of known objects and creates new lively and full of character objects that construct a new inviting world of vagrancy. this artificial world induces a sense of frozen in place nature that is constantly in motion and inviting the beholder to disconnect from the external world and to soak themselves within the objects, the patterns, and the three-dimensional decoration which brings unique character and personality.”
yep. exactly what i was going for.
i’ll just add that the seeing maiyan choose to work with raw black clay and delicate white porcelain was so refreshing. since it’s so much different from her
functional ware, which are way more colorful. i can’t wait to see how all these lines, swirls and circles evolve in maiyan’s future body of work.
fyi, you can purchase maiyan’s colorful ceramics at moxie. a hub for all things israeli goodness.
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www.maiyanceramic.com
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