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MJW PAPER
Exhibition by Judith Bloedjes, CODA MUSEUM Apeldoorn
Wearable Art Installation by Judith Bloedjes, Image by Pim Rusch
POETIC CERAMICS
CODA Museum, Apeldoorn is currently showing Poetic Ceramics, a beautifully orchestrated exhibition of the distinguished oeuvre of ceramicist and jeweller Judith Bloedjes, celebrating CODA’s recent acquisitions of her work. Poetic Ceramics will include hundreds of works of jewellery from Bloedjes’ extensive career, monumental objects from her performances and sketches, drawings and material samples from the artist’s workshop. Accompanying the exhibition is the release of Bloedjes’ book of the same title, which frames the history, experimentation and meticulous craftsmanship behind her works of jewellery, sculpture, installation and home objects. Masterfully thrown from creamy Limoges porcelain and encased in an array of carefully formulated celadon-style glazes, Judith Bloedjes’ cyclical ceramics reimagine the stark whites and regimented forms of utilitarian, minimalist design. Her works utilise rounded, organic, porcelain forms and serene silver contours to embrace the softness of the human body. Although her work centres emptiness,
with the repeated motif of the circle or halo, there is nothing hollow about experiencing Bloedjes’ works, which range from energetic choreographies of churning bodies punctuated by unblemished porcelain loops, to vessels with odd slumps and lumps, each made individual by its idiosyncrasies, to enormous, tranquil porcelain mobiles that gently drift with the movement of the air. The serenity and subtlety of Bloedjes’ works are neither accident nor artifice. To the artist, tranquillity is an embodied practice—a lens through which to consider the world and allow it the space and attention to resonate with us. The absence is the substance. The skin framed by the openings of Bloedjes’ colliers, the inviting vacancy of her vessel forms, the cool Dutch light filtering through paper-thin translucent porcelain, the architectural reliefs of two marble columns about to kiss each other—the frame elevates the painting. It is just as illuminating to look through Judith Bloedjes’ pieces as it is to look at them.
