Oliver New
Animalia Fragiles
Oliver Neu's animal sculptures, created from porcelain and building clay, have an equally naturalistic and alienated-abstract effect. The broken surfaces and fragmentary body constructions - reminiscent of surreal fantasy creatures - come together in the eye of the beholder to form an exciting, contradictory image.
Oliver Neu's main areas of work well explained:
Shino refers to a genre of ceramics that originated in Japan in the 16th century and is still highly prized today for its tactile and visual qualities.
Seladon refers to grey-green to blue-green thickly applied feldspar glazes whose special colouring comes from iron oxide.
Glaze is a glass-like layer which, from a purely functional point of view, is mainly used to provide the porous shards underneath (term for a fired ceramic mass) with a waterproof, dense coating.
In fossil fuel furnaces fired with oil, gas, wood, coal or coke, the fire occurs in an open flame and reducing atmosphere.
Thanks to its modern technology, the electrically powered kiln is a relatively safe firing method that can be used to fire at high temperatures.
Designation for a ceramic material made of feldspar, kaolin and quartz, with dense, light-coloured to white shards (term for a fired ceramic mass)
Designation for ceramics which, with or without glaze after the firing process above 1200° C, has a hard, solid and dense body (term for a fired ceramic mass).
In the context of the „Internationalen Keramiktage Oldenburg“ , the term "sculpture/object" refers to ceramics that are not subject to any function.