Eskil Lam – Fire Tongues
Excerpt from the catalogue “Wifredo Lam – Fire Tongues: Ceramics”, published by Galerie Gmurzynska on the occasion of an exhibition at the gallery spaces in St. Moritz and Zug.
Excerpt from the catalogue “Wifredo Lam – Fire Tongues: Ceramics”, published by Galerie Gmurzynska on the occasion of an exhibition at the gallery spaces in St. Moritz and Zug.
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FIRE TONGUES<br />
Wifredo <strong>Lam</strong><br />
Ceramics<br />
galerie gmurzynska
Fire <strong>Tongues</strong> by <strong>Eskil</strong> <strong>Lam</strong><br />
Perhaps the most significant thing<br />
my father ever taught me he taught<br />
me by example: Life does not end<br />
or, in the best of circumstances, even<br />
slow down at fifty, sixty, or seventy.<br />
My father, Wifredo <strong>Lam</strong>, was in his<br />
late fifties, after all, when he began<br />
experimenting with ceramics and in<br />
his seventies when he inaugurated<br />
his first solo exhibit at Albissola’s<br />
Ceramics Museum in 1975. These<br />
ceramics we are celebrating here in,<br />
Fire <strong>Tongues</strong>, Wifredo <strong>Lam</strong> Ceramics,<br />
are the work of a mature artist, whose<br />
own, unique language has become<br />
earth, fire, water, air. But they are also<br />
the outcome of his involvement in an<br />
artistic community that revolutionized<br />
our notion of contemporary art.<br />
Beyond the legacy my father has left<br />
me—the rather mixed blessing of<br />
becoming a world famous artist—<br />
he has bestowed me with the open<br />
book of a fascinating, subversive and<br />
essential history of art.<br />
My father never tired of innovating<br />
and discovering new forms of<br />
expression, thanks in part to his<br />
encounters with such luminaries as<br />
Picasso, Breton, the poet Césaire, and<br />
later, the post-war internationalists<br />
who made Albissola their favorite<br />
meeting place for bringing about<br />
another revolution in art: Asger Jorn,<br />
Enrico Baj, Guy Debord, Lucio<br />
Fontana, Crippa, Karel Appel….<br />
But I am not only thinking of his<br />
fortuitous, notable encounters with<br />
major artists; he was equally at<br />
home with writers, statesmen and,<br />
no less, the artisans, those skilled<br />
craftsmen, who became his friends<br />
and assisted him in ceramic work and<br />
printmaking. Nelson Herrera Ysla,<br />
writing about my father, concludes<br />
his essay by pointing out that:<br />
“<strong>Lam</strong> managed an extraordinary<br />
balancing act between continuity<br />
and rupture, which only the greatest<br />
artists achieve as the result of a long<br />
process of emotional and intellectual<br />
maturity. Part of this process was the<br />
artist’s ongoing contact with great<br />
anthropologists and people of modest<br />
economic circumstances, as well as his<br />
experiences in cities such as Havana,<br />
Madrid, New York, Paris, Marseille,<br />
Puerto Principe, Fort-de-France and<br />
Albissola in Italy.”<br />
When my father fully embraced<br />
ceramics, he had already chosen<br />
Albissola on the Ligurian coast as his<br />
permanent residence. This is where<br />
we came together as a family over the<br />
holidays. My boyhood memories, to<br />
be honest, are filled more with sunny<br />
days frolicking on the beach than<br />
with high-brow discussions on art or<br />
watching my father paint, sculpt or<br />
etch. After a long day at the beach,<br />
I would often join up with him at<br />
the ceramics factory of San Giorgio,<br />
where he was still busy at work.<br />
I remember having to be quiet and<br />
careful as I wound my way around the<br />
workbenches to find him and Poggi<br />
bent over a still damp plate or vase,<br />
encrusted with strange materials.<br />
You could always tell by my father’s<br />
mood whether or not his ceramics<br />
had survived their night-long firing.<br />
There was no small anxiety involved<br />
in that long wait: the slow rise to<br />
temperatures of 1000° and the long<br />
cooling down process, discovering<br />
how the glazes had turned out or if<br />
anything had broken.<br />
It comes as no surprise, in retrospect,<br />
that my father took so readily to<br />
the art. The medium was an ideal<br />
material for expressing that unique,<br />
personal world we are so familiar<br />
with in his paintings and drawings.<br />
What luxury to be able to mold his<br />
creatures into clay, to give them that<br />
frightening, final test of fire, letting<br />
them metamorphose at will.<br />
No wonder the surrealists, situationists<br />
and CoBrA group took to this<br />
medium with such enthusiasm. By<br />
its very nature, ceramic work offers<br />
the skilled artist a full range of play<br />
and experimentation, and no small<br />
amount of humility—for things do<br />
break and fail constantly. But this<br />
ancient tradition is also what suited<br />
these artists’ thirst for dialogue,<br />
16
for expanding their horizons,<br />
for changing the stakes of their<br />
achievement. This is a medium that<br />
cannot be fully dominated and it<br />
takes a certain trust, I imagine, to let<br />
oneself go and enjoy it. In my father’s<br />
case, this did not happen from one<br />
day to the next and may never have<br />
happened if it had not been for the<br />
insistent encouragement of Asger<br />
Jorn. How could he resist getting<br />
his hands in clay, humanity’s most<br />
ancient, shall we say “primitive,” art<br />
form? So here they are: the figures<br />
of his inimitable world—daunting,<br />
menacing, transparent, masked,<br />
dancing, immobile, proud—set before<br />
us in the shimmering circles of plates<br />
that are not plates, or rising up from<br />
the gentle slopes of unusable bowls<br />
and vases. They are the inventions of<br />
an accomplished artist, an important<br />
player in postwar art but one who<br />
refused to be labeled with anything<br />
but his own name.<br />
Lou Laurin-<strong>Lam</strong>, <strong>Eskil</strong> <strong>Lam</strong> and Asger<br />
Jorn in Albissola, 1961<br />
<strong>Eskil</strong> <strong>Lam</strong><br />
1. Herrera Ysla, Nelson, “Wifredo<br />
<strong>Lam</strong> ahora,” in Biennale di ceramica nell’<br />
arte contemporanea (Biennial of ceramic<br />
in contemporary art), Albissola,<br />
July 21- August 31, 2001.<br />
17
Imprint<br />
Fire <strong>Tongues</strong><br />
Ceramics by Wifredo <strong>Lam</strong><br />
20 February – 20 March 2012<br />
Galerie Gmurzynska St. Moritz<br />
25 April – 30 June 2012<br />
Galerie Gmurzynska Zug<br />
© Galerie Gmurzynska, 2012<br />
Concept: Krystyna Gmurzynska, Mathias Rastorfer<br />
Texts by: Anne Egger, Lou Laurin-<strong>Lam</strong>, <strong>Eskil</strong> <strong>Lam</strong>, Jeannette Weiss<br />
Translations: Unity Woodman, Zena Li, Francesco Trabaldo Togna, Donatella Zazzi, ManRey Übersetzungen GmbH<br />
Design and realization: Edoardo Pepino<br />
Coordination: Jeannette Weiss, Maria Florut<br />
Printed by: Grafiche Step, Parma<br />
Images rights:<br />
© Wifredo <strong>Lam</strong> Estate<br />
© Paolo Zappaterra<br />
© Christophe Laurentin<br />
All rights reserved<br />
ISBN<br />
3-905792-06-0<br />
978-3-905792-06-5