ONE MILLION @ KUNSTGEWERBEMUSEUM | BERLIN
EDITION FOUR ELEMENTS | 4-part porcelain vessel group

Duration: March 31 - April 30, 2023

Location: Museum of Decorative Arts, Matthäikirchplatz, 10785 Berlin

-> www.smb.museum
-> Edition Vier Elemente

Launching the European Days of Arts and Crafts (ETAK), the exhibition Four Elements: Design and Decorative Arts from Paris and Berlin opens at Berlin’s Kunstgewerbemuseum (Museum of Decorative Arts) on 30 March 2023. On view until 30 April 2023, it presents the competition results of the Landespreis Gestaltendes Handwerk (Berlin Regional Award for Design Crafts) from 2019 and 2022.

The exhibition also showcases contemporary production in arts and crafts independent of national boundaries. Prize-winning and shortlisted objects from Berlin are augmented by exhibits from Paris, curated by the CCI Paris Ile-de-France (Regional Chamber of Commerce and Industry). In a diverse show, artisans and designers from both capitals come together, exhibiting a striking language of forms, symbolism and materials.

In relation to the motto "Four Elements," the four heavy vessels want to vaguely, and at first glance, remind you of the rapid growth and strong survival powers of bamboo canes. The "Four Elements" - fire, air, earth and water are known to be the basis of organic life on our planet. But it is precisely these foundations that we are destroying through war, overexploitation, exploitation and climate change.

Four porcelain vessels with articulated surfaces: three concave and one convex element per vessel. The surfaces are reminiscent of the growth rings of a bamboo. Arranging the vessels in chronological order, each convex element is engraved with a word moving from top to bottom: FEUERREDE, AIR WAR, EARTHQUAKE and COOLING WATER. The ONE MILLION item number is also engraved into the four porcelain vessels.

That is why the "Four Elements" remind me today of the forces that are destroying them, such as fundamentalist FIRE SPEECH of past and present AIR WARS, the EARTHQUAKE caused by bombs and last but not least the COOLING WATER necessary for the remaining nuclear power plants.

Exhitibion photos by Valentin Paster