Voyage

HB381 is delighted to announce Voyage, a solo exhibition by Marianne Huotari (b. 1986, Finland). Huotari is known especially for her meticulous ceramic wall rugs and glazed stoneware sculptures which reimagine traditional Finnish long-pile textiles. Although primarily a ceramicist in practice, textile design is Huotari’s métier; through a care-intensive process of craftsmanship the artist sculpts hundreds of oblong ceramic beads, rounded medallions, and crimped petals by hand before affixing them to a metal armature with wire. Each sculptural work begins as though in the workshop of a couturier with Huotari’s vast array of beads carefully sorted by shape, size, and tonality. These are arranged into elaborate compositional patterns and sculpted bas-reliefs. Much like a dressmaker’s mannequin, steel armatures stand at the ready as Huotari fastens each ceramic bead into the matrix of her work. The resulting tessellated and layered surfaces are at times reminiscent of the colorful paisleys and hypnotic patterning of the 1970s, at others hewing closer to the decorative arts of the rococo or art nouveau periods.