EDMUND DE WAAL - letters home at Galerie Max Hetzler, Berlin, 2024

EDMUND DE WAAL
letters home
Potsdamer Strasse 77-87, 10785 Berlin
14 June - 10 August 2024
Galerie Max Hetzler is pleased to present letters home, a solo exhibition of works by Edmund de Waal at Potsdamer Straße 77-87, in Berlin.
In his visual art, Edmund de Waal uses objects as vehicles for human narrative, emotion and history. His installations of handmade porcelain vessels, often contained in minimalist structures, investigate themes of diaspora, memory and materiality. His works offer a kind of visual lyrical narration, created through elements such as rhythm and repetition or light and shadow.
In addition to black, white and oak vitrines made this year, the current exhibition includes both the largest free-standing clay vessels the artist has ever created, and a large-scale pavilion titled there are still songs to sing beyond mankind, 2024. Despite their differences in size and material, all the works are ultimately vessels whose interiors only seem to become more intimate as their dimensions increase.
Individual words or phrases from poems by Denise Riley (b. 1948), Paul Celan (1920-1970) and Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926) are interwoven in the titles or surfaces of these works by de Waal. Here, the focus is not on analysing the texts, but rather on their emotional heft. A further reference to language can be found in the forms of the vitrines, which seem reminiscent of pages from a book. The pavilion, also referred to as a kind of 'teahouse’ by de Waal, draws on the artist's memories of stays in Japan and his studies of sadō, the Japanese tea ceremony.
In dialogue not only with one another, but with history, literature and their surrounding space, de Waal’s works provide a place for pause, in his words, ‘letters home - my attempt to feel both the breath of separation and the pulse of connection’.
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