r&d | kjell rylander archives

page number:

file:

document:

author:

dd-mm-yyyy:

note:

1 / 104

Kjell Rylander Archives

Reflections

Kjell Rylander

25-02-2012

The material on the following pages are A4 paper,

porcelain, brick clay, photographs, text printouts,

hand-written text, glue. They are part of the

reference material used in my artistic development

process as a research fellow in ceramic materials at

the Bergen Academy of Art and Design in 2009-2011.

The A4 sheet of paper has become a symbol for my

expanded role as a research fellow. In that capacity,

I am expected to bring my practice closer to text-

based explanations, and to contextualise my art.

The A4 sheet is a standard format, obvious and simple.

The paper stores signs and symbols, which thus become

information and messages. The paper is a base, a

plinth for signs, and thereby also a forwarder of

these signs and symbols.

A document. A storage place. A fundament.

The A4 documents have been shown in exhibition

contexts in a cube-shaped podium model, like an

exhibition in the exhibition (see illustration

on p. 39).

page number:

file:

document:

author:

dd-mm-yyyy:

note:

9 / 104


Objects

Kjell Rylander

25-02-2012

The following pages feature porcelain, clay, paper,

plaster, glue, porcelain bases sawn from saucers and

plates, left-over handles glued onto paper, porcelain

mug with handle removed, with glued-on paper from

paper cups, two sawn-out porcelain plate bases,

one part with seven holes, a plaster mould, paper

cups found indoors, outdoors, in varying condition,

flattened, used and processed with glued-on porcelain

details, porcelain plate, used, with paper glued on

around it, a shredded porcelain plate, two porcelain

handles glued onto a slightly larger sheet of paper,

three porcelain rods glued together out of parts of

handles, two cups with parts of their walls sawn out,

handles missing, sawn and modified saucers/plates, six

thumbed brick clay mugs with details glued on, paper

handles, porcelain handles, fragments of paper cups

glued on the unfired clay, porcelain rims/edges sawn

from saucers and plates, one large and one smaller

paper cup with unfired brick clay glued to the bottom,

porcelain mug half-filled with brick clay, twelve

thumbed shapes in unfired porcelain and stoneware

clay, thumbed, flat plate-like shapes, four, in

unfired brick clay, with paper from paper plates and

saucers glued on, paper cups, 22, stacked, with two

glued-on porcelain details, a stack of A4 paper.

page number:

file:

document:

author:

dd-mm-yyyy:

note:

33 / 104


Kontentum: retrospection, reformulation, documentation

Kjell Rylander

21-10-2011--6-11-2011

Pictures from the exhibition at Galleri Rom 8, Bergen,

Norway. The gallery measures some 85 sq m, the space

has two pillars, one round and one four-sided, the

ceiling height is c. 3.6 metres. The floor is covered

with a mottled-grey vinyl carpet, 12 strip-lighting

fixtures in the ceiling; walls, ceiling and pillars

are painted white; three large windows, one entrance,

one back door, many electric wall sockets.

The title of the project and exhibition, Kontentum,

is a term used in the film industry to signify the

ambient sounds that surround us daily. These sounds

arise as the result of activities and interaction.

Everything that supports, carries and holds the

objects is relevant: walls, shelves, podiums and piles

of paper serve as parts of sculptures; these elements

which are often neutral have a supporting function,

in, under, around and behind the "actual" art, and

serve as an ambience in the art world every day; this

exhibition emphasises their presence and their value.

Kjell Rylander has been a leading figure in Swedish ceramics ever since

graduating from Konstfack University College of Arts, Craft and Design in

2001. His approach to the classical repertoire of ceramics was exciting,

new and different at that time. Instead of working with wet clay, turning

and modelling it to create his own shapes, he took already made cups and

plates as his point of departure. Through various interventions, these

objects were emptied of all utility function and filled with metaphorical

meaning instead.

Rylander was therefore a natural candidate for the position of research

fellow when Bergen Academy of Art and Design embarked on the three-year

research project – Creating Artistic Value – a research project about

readymades, art and ceramic in 2008 in collaboration with the West Norway

Museum of Decorative Art. The project has been funded by the Research Council

of Norway’s Research Programme on Assigning Cultural Values (KULVER), and

Rylander was attached to the project from 2009 to 2011.

There are many reasons why more and more craft artists are finding their

raw materials in second-hand shops and on rubbish tips. For Rylander, this

choice of materials enabled him to embark on a ceramic practice that neither

focuses on the artist’s emotional life and the imprint of his hand nor

heroises or cultivates the extraordinary. Instead, it has served to draw

attention to what we otherwise tend to overlook: the modest and anonymous

objects that surround us in our everyday lives.

Rylander’s explorations have been about what value these trivial objects

can have in social and artistic contexts. In the exhibition Kontentum,

which forms the core of Archives, the objects have been deconstructed and

reconstructed, collected, sorted and presented in ways that are reminiscent

of archives, warehouses or museum storage rooms. His years spent in a

research environment have left a clear mark in terms of both content and

form. His exploration of materials has been expanded to also include paper,

plaster and raw clay.

Rylander has even succeeded in giving his reflective contribution a form

that is more visual than written. Thus, it is his distinctive experiences

and reflections as an artist that govern and dominate his artistic research.

In Scandinavia, it is only in the last 10 to 15 years that artistic research

has been placed on an equal footing with academic, scholarly research. While

the methods and forms of presentation they employ are usually very different,

it is now recognised that they both contribute new insight that is valuable

to society. Nevertheless, many people still ask what it means to conduct

research through art and wonder what form research of this kind can take.

They may find some answers at Gustavsbergs Konsthall’s exhibition Making

Knowledge, from 26 May to 16 September 2012.

Rylander is showing Kontentum, the artistic result of his time as a

page number:

file:

document:

author:

dd-mm-yyyy:

43 / 104


Foreword

Jorunn Veiteberg

25-02-2012

research fellow, at the exhibition. In addition to shedding light on the

research process, Kontentum also contributes to the debate about where craft

is heading. It is a discussion that both the Creating Art Value project and

Gustavsbergs Konsthall are interested in continuing, which is why we have

joined forces to publish the book Kjell Rylander Archives. Many thanks to

the authors, whose reflections on Rylander’s art provide new insight, and,

not least, to Kjell Rylander, who through this documentation has made his

“archive material” available beyond the limited period the exhibition will

be open.

page number:

file:

document:

author:

dd-mm-yyyy:

45 / 104


Foreword

Jorunn Veiteberg

25-02-2012

For ten years, I was a builder and joiner. When I later started on my

education as an artist/ ceramicist the questions that occupied me were what

direction my life could take, and why, but also what new values in and around

ceramic materials could I contribute and develop? These are questions that

still form the core of my artistic endeavors.

I have chosen not to get my fingers involved in the clay. I departed from

the traditional way of using the material, which is for most ceramicists a

defining issue that is in accord with the romantic image of a craftsperson’s

approach. Instead, I chose to use a method more closely related to my time

as a joiner. I started using a diamond wet saw (commonly used in the glass

industry) to cut existing cups, dishes, and plates that I bought in second-

hand shops.

By reassessing what I had learnt in my ceramics training, I found a new

language. I am still working with the same material but from a different

starting point. This working method was meant not just to mess with my

education, and myself but also to question the nature of what craft art can

be. I aimed at breaking down the oppositions between everyday wares and

elevated artefacts and even between unique objects and mass-produced ones.

page number:

file:

document:

author:

dd-mm-yyyy:

47 / 104


Artist Statement

Kjell Rylander

25-02-2012

page number:

file:

document:

author:

dd-mm-yyyy:

49 / 104


Backstage Antics

Glenn Adamson

25-02-2012

Kjell Rylander is in every way a product of university art culture. The

objects he makes are saturated with the sophistication, self-awareness,

and perhaps even introversion that we might expect of an academic. He has

been involved over the past few years in a relatively recent intellectual

phenomenon that has been sweeping through art schools across Europe. This

is called “practice-based research,” a process by which intuitive making

is rendered into rigorous investigation and self-criticism. Even Rylander

himself isn’t sure what the prospects of this undertaking might be. When

I put the question to him, he replied with his typical restraint: “perhaps

is not a question to answer; perhaps it should not be answered, but explored.

We are on a new ground, intellectually.”

Indeed we are. Even so, before coming on to his work, it might be worth

retracing the steps so far. The concept of “practice-based research” seems

to have emerged first in Britain, for reasons that have more to do with

politics than aesthetics. Once upon a time, institutions of higher education

in the UK were split into two broad categories: universities, which attracted

upper- and middle-class students and were organized around the long-

established principles of academic research; and the polytechnics, vocational

schools aimed at a working-class clientele, which avoided the open-ended,

individualistic education of the universities and instead prepared their

students for practical careers in engineering, nursing, mechanics, and the

like. To the left-wing Labour government that came into power in the 1990s,

this arrangement was no more or less than a means of enforcing traditional

class hierarchy. So they abolished the division between scholarly and

vocational education. All institutions were now to be universities, and

anything that happened inside them was to be considered research – no matter

how practical it might seem.

A corollary of this great shift in British higher education was that

funding would henceforth be pegged to “research outcomes,” which would be

measured both qualitatively and quantitatively. No exceptions. Faculty in

art, craft and design suddenly found themselves “researchers.” For some

this was a welcome blast of fresh air; it seemed an appropriate way to

value the increasingly conceptual activities going on in their studio-based

departments. For others, especially those working with traditional skills,

it was bewildering: does throwing a pot at the wheel or painting a canvas

really constitute research? If so, does that mean you have to do it

differently? And if not, are those activities no longer worth studying?

The most recent outgrowth of this puzzling situation has been the

advent of the PhD in practice-based research. Now a potter or painter can

get the highest academic qualification available, equivalent to that of

any historian, sociologist or chemist. Art is not easily tested – it is

notoriously subjective, its significance often difficult even to recognize

page number:

file:

document:

author:

dd-mm-yyyy:

51 / 104


Backstage Antics

Glenn Adamson

25-02-2012

at first. Nor are an artist’s “findings” easily transported to another

researcher’s practice, as a historical account, sociological analysis or

experimental result in chemistry would be.

Despite these challenges, the practice-based PhD is probably here to stay

(for reasons of funding, if no other), and it is now being exported to other

countries, including Norway. Though he is technically not a doctoral student,

Rylander could be considered an emblematic product of this system, and also

as an example of how it can best be navigated: that is, to use it against

itself. At first his work comes off as diligent and studious, amply stocked

with the elements of self-reference that graduate students are expected to

produce. Much as a conventional PhD student might liberally populate the

pages of a dissertation with footnotes, statistics or charts, Rylander gives

us shelving: the literal underpinnings of his work. Arranged in a way that

suggests both the drying racks of a pottery and the rolling stacks of a

library are little objects in which handmade and readymade blend seamlessly.

They strike one as jottings, notes toward a future work, but they are

arranged like an archive.

This is just one way that Rylander’s exhibition Kontentum submerges the

evidence of his practice into the practice itself, so that there is no real

space between them. He plays on the inherent fascination of spaces of making,

the back rooms of the studio with their prosaic furnishings, so familiar to

the artist but exotic to others. His art lives backstage, and he is more a

prop manager than a leading man. The aesthetic range of the work is generic,

and the materials are close to devoid in personality: unpainted MDF, metal

storage units, edges of plates hard to identify. Here are the crushed paper

cups he encounters on the way to the studio, subtly limned with porcelain to

mark them out as objects of careful attention. There are the plaster molds

necessary to make his slipcast objects, and examples of his own undergraduate

student work. Taken as a whole the show is a palimpsest, in which Rylander’s

personal past (including the time he spent as a carpenter before coming to

art school) is compiled for careful evaluation; yet we learn very little

about him.

One work (or is it two?) in Kontentum sums up his approach beautifully:

a pair of found office shelves topped by the trimmed rims of numerous

plates, as if a kitchen cabinet’s worth of crockery had sunk magically into

the shelving’s metal depths (fig. 1). The two sculptures are more or less

identical, but one is displayed upside-down, admitting a view into its dusty

interior (fig. 2). This doubling and inversion serves as a literal symbol of

looking at things from multiple perspectives, like a good researcher should.

But the rationality is troubled by a hint of madness – as if sense itself, as

well as the object, were being turned on its head. (The effect of absurdity

is dramatically heightened by the application of tiny accession numbers to

page number:

file:

document:

author:

dd-mm-yyyy:

53 / 104


Backstage Antics

Glenn Adamson

25-02-2012

the many elements of the piece when it was acquired by the West Norway Museum

of Decorative Art. Whoever did that was an accidental artist’s assistant,

playing right into Rylander’s hands.) The work speaks to the sheer, arbitrary

willfulness that is necessary to any really worthwhile artistic endeavor,

tacitly making the case that due diligence alone isn’t likely to produce

results.

(fig. 1)

(fig. 2)

Here another thought occurs: could Rylander perhaps be read as a satirist,

poking fun at the situation of the academic art student? If so the satire

is a gentle one. Rylander has pointed out that “the basis of all research

is that it can be criticized, questioned.” If so, it seems clear that the

whole construct of practice-based research needs itself to be criticized

and questioned. But Rylander does this thoughtfully, probing at the edges

of his situation rather than attacking it head on. It is telling that when

Rylander builds a wall, it has no front, only two backs. He’s always trying

to get behind things. And if this urge leads him into an infinite regress,

an uncertain terrain where “practice-based research” means not the discovery

of scientific knowledge, but the piling up of questions that can’t quite be

answered, so much the better.

page number:

file:

document:

author:

dd-mm-yyyy:

55 / 104


The Anthropic Aura

Glen R. Brown

25-02-2012

The word “setting” readily applies to the rows and clusters of severed

porcelain rims and handles, the blank, white plates made dentate through

series of parallel incisions, and the unassuming, office-gray-steel or

weathered-wood shelves that host the collections of objects comprising the

recent work of Swedish artist Kjell Rylander. The place setting, an ensemble

of functional tableware, is implicitly central to these haunting works,

but at the same time setting as place – as environment, or more specifically

stage, with all its connotations of hushed expectations for the unfolding

of drama – asserts itself as a preliminary condition for yet another meaning

of setting, setting as action: a process of deliberately arranging objects in

space but also, and more importantly, of thereby fixing their meanings.

In Rylander’s sculptures the equivalent of place settings inhabit settings

through the act of setting, and together these factors set conceptual

parameters for the work.

These parameters embrace multiple themes as diverse as history (both

the history of utilitarian ceramic objects as a class and the pasts of

specific utilitarian ceramic objects), the layering of social values around

utilitarian objects, recycling (both as a means of recouping objects and as

a strategy in creativity), and the aesthetics of that particular variety of

manipulated found-object that Marcel Duchamp described, with characteristic

alliteration, as the “ready-made aided.” Despite their overdetermination

– their origins in multiple causes – Rylander’s new works are as deceptively

simple in form as his previous sculptures, many of which could have been

mistaken for episodes in the pursuit of the kind of formal essence sought by

Minimalists in the 1960s if not for the fact that their utilitarian ceramic

elements resisted the autonomy fundamental to formalism. The negation of

utility through Rylander’s dismemberment of cups and dissection of plates

has made clear that his works are not geared for real-world function either

but rather for reflection on issues such as “how artists change the value of

objects through reworking them.”

Reworking industrially manufactured plates and cups has been a central

strategy in Rylander’s art since 2001 and the completion of his MFA at

Konstfack (The University of Arts, Crafts and Design) in Stockholm. The

cutting and joining skills necessary for this activity were acquired even

earlier during the years when he worked as a carpenter prior to pursuing

an undergraduate degree at Capellagården School of Craft and Design in

1994. Carefully sawing bland factory produced cups and saucers into clean-

edged fragments that could be assembled and glued into linear or circular

arrangements, Rylander drove sterility from the industrial multiple. His

white coffee cups joined together like the circles of friends and companions

that they metonymically evoked were, in a sense, redeemed through allusions

to humanity (fig. 1). The key accomplishment of these earlier works was to

page number:

file:

document:

author:

dd-mm-yyyy:

57 / 104


The Anthropic Aura

Glen R. Brown

25-02-2012

demonstrate that the banality of mass-produced ceramic objects gives way to

an intan-gible but compellingly human quality, something that I will for the

sake of convenience describe as an anthropic aura, when they have been used.

(fig. 1)

This aura is not quite the same as the aura of history, which evokes the

sensation of a certain temporal separation from objects, such as the Ming

porcelain sherds nestled in a plastic container on the shelf of one of

Rylander’s new multipartite sculptures. The aura of history is something

one experiences while casting an eye over manganese dendrites speckling the

surface of a pre-Columbian figurine or the silvery iridescence of leached

lead that blankets a glazed Han vessel as a consequence of centuries of

internment in the earth. The anthropic aura of ceramic objects may overlap

with this aura of history, as when we observe the scratches left on the

interior of an albarello by a 16th-century Florentine apothecary’s spoon,

but it can arise just as easily from objects that are relatively new. It may

envelop ceramic objects in museum vitrines, but it is encountered even more

obviously on the shelves of thrift stores, where holiday plates, slogan mugs

and cartoon-character salt and pepper shakers have arrived (fig. 2), via

estate sales, from the cupboards of people who made them part of their lives.

(fig. 2)

The anthropic aura of utilitarian ceramic objects is not, of course,

contingent upon our knowledge of the specific owners and users of those

page number:

file:

document:

author:

dd-mm-yyyy:

59 / 104


The Anthropic Aura

Glen R. Brown

25-02-2012

objects. It accrues to those objects simply when we perceive (or even when

we falsely assume) that they have been used by some person in the ordinary

course of life. But the anthropic aura does not conjure this unknown person

without also stressing his or her absence, since the lips that once met the

rim of a mug or the fingers that used to curl around a handle are nowhere to

be seen. In this respect the anthropic aura surrounding a ceramic utilitarian

object is something like the aura that we most often associate with works of

art: the aura that, as the theorist Walter Benjamin famously pointed out,

is associated with the artist’s hand in both a literal and figurative sense.

The aura of the Mona Lisa, for example, derives not from its formal beauty,

the mystery surrounding its subject matter, or its confrontation of the

viewer as a portrait but rather from the realization that Leonardo’s brush

actually caressed its surface and his living reflection once glided across

the still-wet glazes of oil composing its smoky depths. The artist is long

gone, but the work remains as a token of his former presence and his present

absence.

For Rylander, used ceramic objects convey this curious blend of presence

and absence through their implied connections to the ambiance of everyday

life, to what he describes as “kontentum” (the title he applies to his most

recent series of work). “Kontentum is a term used in the film industry,” he

explains. “It refers to background noise that is around us daily. The sound

is so obvious that we barely hear it, but it occurs as a result of human

activities and interactions. Around ceramic items such as cups and plates,

there is a ‘sum of the voices,’ a buzz that comes with the use of ceramic

objects (clink, crushing, slurping, scratches, etc.).” The allusions to

kontentum generated by used ceramic vessels are for Rylander the chief

means by which a social dimension – and therefore an important aspect of

art – is manifested by his sculptures. But this social dimension – which

is more than the anthropic aura; which is an anthropic aura multiplied,

so to speak – is ultimately experienced as an absence. It is conjured by

the mind as something that once enveloped the used ceramic objects, but it

remains distant and unknowable. In recognition of this elusiveness and his

own desire somehow to overcome it, Rylander gave to his 2010 exhibition at

the Eskilstuna Museum of Art (fig.3), Sweden, the title “Portraits of the

Anonymous.”

But, of course, the sculptures only partly convey anonymity. The place

settings that seem to murmur the kontentum of the settings they once

inhabited acquire new sets of meanings through Rylander’s use of them. As

artist, he sets those new meanings through the kind of use relevant to art,

the use of materials that we associate with the artist’s hand and hence the

artistic aura. That aura supplements rather than supplants the anthropic

aura – the allusions to use that the found objects carry forward from their

page number:

file:

document:

author:

dd-mm-yyyy:

61 / 104


The Anthropic Aura

Glen R. Brown

25-02-2012

former utilitarian contexts – with the result that Rylander’s objects are

doubly enveloped by aura. Both life and art weave allusions around the

objects, although in the end the viewer is equally conscious of the absence

of those hands that once held the cups at a dinner table and the hand of the

artist who set the objects in their present arrangement. The relationship

between absence and presence, the past and present is rendered even more

complex by Rylander’s disclosure that some of the objects incorporated

into the sculptures are “leftovers, parts from my own early production that

have been hidden and forgotten in my studio, like ruins or remnants from

the past.” Even those parts that were not selected for use in the present

contribute to a layering of meaningful absence around the sculptures. The

present, Rylander asserts, is influenced as much “through everything that

did not become anything” as through events that occurred.

(fig. 3)

On the surface of things it might seem appropriate to group Rylander’s

sculptures with the swelling current of contemporary studio ceramics in

which decorative tendencies have been abandoned in favor of blank, monochro-

matic surfaces and personal expression has given way to an almost industrial

anonymity. An impression of absence, after all, is as key to that work as

to Rylander’s. But the latter conveys a kind, or rather kinds, of absence

quite different from the tendentious anonymity of the artist. Through the

obvious act of arranging the found components of his sculptures Rylander

does manifest the ambiguous absence/presence of himself, but the haunting

poignancy of his work derives even more fundamentally from masterful deploy-

ment of the anthropic aura, of the impression of a murmuring kontentum that

lingers like an intangible human cloak around every used ceramic object.

page number:

file:

document:

author:

dd-mm-yyyy:

63 / 104


Questioning Everyday Things

Gabi Dewald

25-02-2012

A fantastic cumulus cloud handle billows up the side of a cup. Like the backs

of slim fish, raised plate segments emerge through a smooth, grey surface.

Like the outline of a cloud, a structure made of fine porcelain arcs hovers

upwards in a gently ethereal manner. In a compendious system of shelving,

porcelain artefacts lie in murky depths, like notes of music scattered across

their staves.

What an amazing mixture Kjell Rylander’s art is. He uses only old, used,

pre-existing porcelain, referring to it as “trivial” in apparent self-

deprecation. Old tableware that has been ditched, put on sale at the flea-

market at a knock-down price, given away as unloved, shoddy ware inherited

from some family member; kitsch, junk, rubbish, yesterday’s goods, old-

fashioned things with no further use. The dregs of everyday objects, the

things left over when people leave the district, move house, die or turn

their interest to new things. – Yet isn’t tableware normally considered to

be charged with a highly pronounced emotional burden? Isn’t the porcelain

industry always complaining that despite people’s predilection for purchasing

new furniture and new clothes, their dinner service and tableware endure

for ever and are the last things to be replaced, ending up stored in the

attic rather than being given away? Tableware carries too many memories of

our childhood or of the first time we set up home; it reminds us of special

celebrations and other moments when guests were invited, as well as everyday

family rituals. And as such, it reminds us of habits and moments that create

our identity, memories that repeatedly confirm and are the very embodiment

of our individuality. And yet: as soon as you remove tableware from our own

personal sphere of reference within the home setting, this magic immediately

disappears. Unlike clothes and jewellery, tableware is not synonymous with

individual people, but with social frameworks, with their social conventions

and cultural habits.

(fig. 1)

Highly contaminated emotionally and charged with an infinite amount of

information, this material which has slipped into anonymity forms the start-

ing point of Kjell Rylander’s work. Before he began his training in ceramics,

page number:

file:

document:

author:

dd-mm-yyyy:

65 / 104



Gabi Dewald

25-02-2012

Rylander used to be a joiner. And his tool of preference is today still the

saw – even when working with porcelain. A highly pragmatic approach, one

might think. In fact, that’s exactly what Rylander does: he takes porcelain

cast-offs and saws them up, proceeding in a carefully planned and extremely

precise manner. Finally, he does what he learnt to do as a joiner: with the

utmost care, he glues back together the pieces he has so carefully sawn apart

(fig. 1). The forms thus created are new and no longer intended for everyday

use. And yet they all speak of the everyday context, continuously revisiting

it – and hence also revisiting the state of our society.

Kjell Rylander comes from a background steeped in craft, arts and crafts,

and applied art. Amazingly for a man working in applied art, he bucks the

trend of distancing himself as far as possible from the reputation of the

utilitarian, of the everyday, of consumer goods, and turns these aspects

into his own artistic concept: all his objects take the everyday as their

intellectual starting point quite deliberately, and the banal is his

aesthetic treasure trove (fig. 2).

(fig. 2)

The ingredients of his art are things marginalised in artistic contexts

on every level: he uses discarded remnants; he works in a most emphatic

craft-related way; he is clearly involved with the subject matter of

applied art. And one might even conclude that this is the – most cunning –

(marketing) concept of an artist intent on creating an unmistakeable profile.

However, I cannot imagine any artist less likely to adopt this kind of

approach than Kjell Rylander.

An increasing number of artists are making use of found objects as their

medium and means of expression. This holds true for applied art, and for

ceramics in particular. Since Duchamp introduced readymade into art with

his famous urinal, the artistic re-appropriation of non-artistic objects

has become a frequently tapped source of inspiration. In particular, the

page number:

file:

document:

author:

dd-mm-yyyy:

67 / 104



Gabi Dewald

25-02-2012

combination of applied art and readymade takes great delight in exaggerating

the trivial until it becomes absurd, of overstating bourgeois banality until

it becomes comical, of stretching the common until it becomes dangerous,

and of making gravitas become witty. Yet this kind of re-labelling is not

what Rylander is all about. It seems that this humorous, even sarcastic and

occasionally vain detour is not productive enough for him, that it lacks

interest because it fails to lead to his objective.

Rylander’s position among those who work with the unassuming nature and

plainness of the everyday object reminds me of the porcelain installations

of Edmund de Waal. To my mind, both are linked by their innate reserve and

casualness, by the gentle, poetic way they question objects, spaces and

relationships. Both manage to achieve a type of lyrical result – although the

one makes his vessels from scratch, while the other uses found items which

he fragments and reassembles in new constellations. Yet the self-restraint

of the artist as an author is comparable: their work is based on first

principles, on existing objects/shapes which are carefully complemented.

Here, we find a plain cylindrical form, and there everyday tableware.

Questions are the guiding light, not assertive statements. And whereas one

of them asks questions of the architecture of inner space, of identity within

a spatial context, the other is interested in the architecture of everyday

life, of finding oneself amongst a corpus of habit. Yet when all is said and

done, the work of both of them is full of musicality and rhythm. With his

calm interventions, de Waal orchestrates space, sets optical counterpoints

with his ceramic implementations and thus re-interprets existing designs.

Rylander composes light, lyrical paraphrases and variations that caress and

question a common theme in ever new ways. His constellations are possessed

of a high rhythmic tension.

With Rylander, formal arrangement is always accompanied by certain

artistic interventions in form. He is never concerned with addition, with

the mass per se, with the sculptural quality: we no longer find developments

created next to, on top of, or with each other, as used to be the case.

Where social structures are concerned, there is currently little that

is guaranteed; there is only conjecture. Much seems to be in a state of

upheaval.

Domestic tableware from days gone by is synonymous with outmoded everyday

organisational systems which apparently no longer have any value. The repe-

tition of the form of the plate, the rim of the cup, the detached handled is

co-terminus with the repetition of the question of how these elements will

be handled and used in the future, and of what their significance will be.

Here, too, Rylander’s interventions are always unspectacular, verging more

on the casual, never an end in themselves, and hence all the more entangled.

Many of his “still life” works look as if they have been taken straight

page number:

file:

document:

author:

dd-mm-yyyy:

69 / 104



Gabi Dewald

25-02-2012

from a workshop or a materials store. There is much that seems processual,

temporary, experimental, as though collected and collated and likely to be

modified at any given time. Even when the individual elements are firmly

connected with one another.

Rylander’s approach is also remarkable vis-à-vis the existing decoration

of the porcelain fragments. It goes without saying that familiar patterns

evoke memories, associations and feelings. Paul Scott and Caroline Slotte

have long been working with this phenomenon. But Rylander’s work differs

greatly from their approach. Scott works with the subversive method of

alienation by embedding disturbing objects, patterns and scenery in familiar,

idyllic landscapes. He thus leverages and unmasks the inertia of our

habitual way of seeing things in order to make political and socio-critical

statements.

On the other hand, Caroline Slotte’s sublime erasure of images and motifs,

with its artistic decisiveness, draws the viewer in towards the depth

within her work. She removes familiar, singularly legible elements in such

a radical manner that the features are only just discernable, and the viewer

must invent his or her own story. Plates become stages on whose (barely

discernable) scenery the eye of the beholder invents its own associative

choreography.

When Rylander works with recognisable decoration, he does so as an

anchorage point for collective and individual memory. However, his concern

is not with narrative or critical remarks. And it does not seem as if he is

trying to instil any kind of position or feeling into the person who sees

these decorations and thus experiences a triggering of sensations. Rather,

he is exploring our collective memory with a view to enlivening it, so that

as many people as possible take part in answering the questions he considers

important.

What exactly does tableware represent? Is it communication, or tradition?

Is it our home, or maybe the plans we nurtured in our youth for our future

life? Possibly even rituals? A common nature? Social status? Savoir vivre?

– These concepts may seem antiquated, but are they not essential for human

existence? Are they being replaced today by new values?

In times when society is becoming increasingly nomadic, fast-paced and

with a global emphasis, many of the memories we encounter when faced with

Rylander’s tableware fragments seem miles away from us. Even a daily meal

shared at home around the same table is alien to most of today’s family

groups. Inimitable in its lack of all things judgemental, Rylander’s work

“Street Ware” alludes to the significance of the (shared) partaking of food.

He gives porcelain bottoms and handles to paper cups that have been thrown

away. Here, the shared coffee-drinking experience is not that of those who

sit around the table at home, but of those who rush through the streets of

page number:

file:

document:

author:

dd-mm-yyyy:

71 / 104



Gabi Dewald

25-02-2012

an urban environment. Here, tableware is not cherished, cleaned, preserved,

taken out from the cupboard again, and handled, but used and thrown away.

– What else?

His last piece of work, “Kontentum”, places a very clear emphasis on

the research nature of his work. Seldom before has a ceramic installation

made so much sense. Rylander creates a type of archive, a walk-in directory

which he fills with all kinds of different things. A viewable storage depot,

accessible to researchers and the general public alike, containing found

objects, moulded items, skeletal objects, as though presented on special

stands, piles of stuff that remind one of a graveyard for motor vehicles.

Rylander is archivist, taxidermist and sociologist at one and the same time.

Everyday things are a mirror of our soul. What will they look like in

the future? What will tomorrow’s rituals be? – Rylander’s interventions

emphasise the competence of applied artists with regard to this question.

Who, by definition, is more competent than those who get to grips with these

questions? – In so doing, he pleads emphatically for a change of paradigm.

He makes applied art – and hence those who are occupied with the subject –

out of practical knowledge and theoretical stance that meet as a shimmering

intersect, where socio-political, sociological, psychological, demographic,

economic, marketing-orientated, design-specific, ecological and, ultimately,

practical questions and their possible answers meet.

But Rylander – archivist and researcher – reflects the answers to such

questions in an unbiased manner back to society. The way he formulates his

emphatically open questions and provides the merest of hints at possible

answers is quite remarkable. His formal arabesques and paraphrases mark out

the empty, open centre: the middle of the plate is missing or is comprised

of a black mirror. Handles form the outline of a cloud (fig. 3). The edges

(fig. 3)

of plates emerge from an impenetrable void. On the shelves, we see a large

amount of space between the artefacts stored there. Not through ignorance.

But through respect, it seems, for the multitude of answers and for the

process of finding them and formulating them.

page number:

file:

document:

author:

dd-mm-yyyy:

73 / 104



Gabi Dewald

25-02-2012

In his work, the fragmentary is poetically stimulating (fig. 4), without

even slightly prescribing any particular direction. In no way in Rylander’s

work does the fragment symbolise merely the destruction or decay of things

gone by. Instead, it stands for a plethora of stimuli and elements which

force us into a process of reconstitution. It is an aide-mémoire, freed of

all predetermined definition of the whole, of which it once formed a part.

(fig. 4)

The phrasings describing space, which often seem to be lighter than air,

invite us to complement this space and fill it with our own new suggestions.

The playful arrangement of disparate elements (handles, rims of cups, bottoms

of plates, etc.) invites us to compile new objects from our store of memories

and habits, and thus to invent new rituals. If there is anything Rylander

insists on, it is a reference to the poetry of everyday life. With a light

touch, he paraphrases a meandering chain of habits, along which individuality

and commonality are formed and take shape. With his sober, weightless and

deeply poetic questioning of the status quo, Kjell Rylander is indeed an

outstanding figure.

page number:

file:

document:

author:

dd-mm-yyyy:

75 / 104


A Man of Small Gestures

Caroline Slotte

25-02-2012

1) The Course

It is autumn. I have invited him, and we are teaching a course together.

I know his work, but I don’t know him. We are both visitors in this country.

We walk around together, from student to student, desk to desk. It is one

of the first days, it is a good day. He says something that I write down

afterwards. Every element you add to a work takes energy from the others.

Two strong elements are weakened if you add a third. Does he mean that the

amount of energy is constant? Does he apply the same idea to his words as he

does to his work? Is he sparing with words so as not to reduce their power?

2) Something happens to me when I do like this

There are three of us in the room. On the table are two sheets of white copy

paper, and on them are some ceramic fragments, two pieces, possibly three.

The fragments are roughly cut, from plates or bowls with pale pastel glazes.

We concentrate on the objects, on the material qualities – a worn table top,

thin, crisp paper, chiming, high-fired porcelain. The strange shapes of the

porcelain, like by-products from an unknown industrial process, against the

mute paper, the bland standard format. We regard how the pure white lifts

the fragments, how this fraction of a millimetre makes the whole difference,

separates the shards from the table, from everything.

And then he takes one of the objects and moves it, he puts it in a different

place on the sheet. Something happens to me when I do like this, he says. It

doesn’t take long for someone else to say something, something that fills in

and explains, that sounds good and necessary in the moment, but is forgotten

as soon as we leave the room.

3) Hanging out with Kjell

It is day, it is night. We are in motion.

Foreign streets, a borrowed town. Down stairways, across bridges, underground

and above. The motion is continuous. The towns merge. We are there. In a flow

of people, in a carriage that shakes along tiled passages. In the heat of the

day, through the lights of the night. Never still, always in motion.

That is how I know him, this is where I hear his voice. Against a buzzing

background of urban flickering – as though the world were moving and we were

page number:

file:

document:

author:

dd-mm-yyyy:

77 / 104



Caroline Slotte

25-02-2012

standing still. Here, all is transient except the dialogue, what he says and

what I say. In these moments, we evade being rooted, we are simultaneously

a part of the world, and not, and the sense of community materialises as a

body above the buzz.

4) The Cup

I have one of his works. It is a paper cup, white, with a handle, like the

ones used for coffee, or hot cordial. It is crumpled and dirty. If I turn it

over and look carefully, I can see that the base of the cup is not made of

paper but china. It looks like the porcelain circle is cut from the base of

a real cup, one with exactly the same diameter. The circle fits perfectly

into the hole left by the paper base. I try looking into the cup to see the

inside of the base but I can’t, the opening of the cup is tightly shut.

The paper is stiff, the crumples and creases completely hard. I try moving

the handles. One is folded out and free, the other is pressed under the cup.

A small flap of the lower handle is squeezed in under the rolled upper edge

of the cup. The handle can’t be dislodged without unrolling the edge. Why is

it like that? Did he fasten it intentionally? What has he done to the paper

to make it that stiff?

A coffee stain runs like a circle around the outside of the cup base. In

one place the stain washes up over the side of the cup. There is something

strange about the position of the stain. I feel the inside of the cup – yes,

it is smooth, covered with a thin plastic film. The inside does not absorb

liquid. The outside does. It stains easily. But not in the way his cup is

stained.

5) The Exhibition

There is nobody in the gallery when I arrive. Two dividing walls confront me,

one short and one long. I see the reverse side. I know he built them himself.

Objects are lying on white plinths along the walls, some I recognise, some

are new. I go round the short dividing wall to see what is on the front. But

the front is also a back.

So I immediately go round the long dividing wall. The same thing there, the

wall has no front side. It is a free-standing mock-up, constructed in the

simplest way to support itself, to stand upright. Against the back wall of

the gallery are shelves placed close together with white objects. In front

of the shelves is an upturned plinth (fig. 1). I can look inside it. The

page number:

file:

document:

author:

dd-mm-yyyy:

79 / 104



Caroline Slotte

25-02-2012

edges are covered in dust and cobwebs. Under the plinth, pressed against the

floor, is a grey metal filing shelf. It protrudes slightly beyond the edges.

I recognise it. I’ve seen that shelf many times. Turned the right way up.

(fig. 1)

I can’t rid myself of the sensation of being behind something. That I’m in

the back room, the place where the leftover fragments – the things needed to

create the front – are stored. That things are actually happening somewhere

else.

Epilogue: The Forum of Half Sentences

Kjell’s works make me breathe more slowly. There is something about them that

requires me to calm down, collect myself.

An encounter with Kjell’s works is not, in fact, that different from an

encounter with Kjell himself. First of all: Kjell is not for sale. He cannot

be lured. He cannot be bribed. He has integrity. Of the tenacious, painfully

meticulous kind. And in the same way that Kjell is sober and modest in his

work, it is pointless to exert oneself in experiencing them. There is nothing

insistent, nothing dead certain, about Kjell’s works. They speak with a

level-headed voice.

There is something about this that has a calming effect – the fact that right

here, right now, we are not playing any games. Here, the ambitions are of

human dimensions. Kjell protects the factual, the core of the work, its idea.

He does not allow himself to be distracted by external conventions, demands

or expectations.

Secondly: this is the forum of half sentences. An encounter with Kjell’s

page number:

file:

document:

author:

dd-mm-yyyy:

81 / 104



Caroline Slotte

25-02-2012

works is an encounter with something that is still wordless and does not

easily take the form of words. His works are scant. There is no abundance

in them, and therefore there is nothing in them that seeks to please. This

is one of their strengths, that muteness, immutability. For just like some

sentences in a conversation are left unfinished, and never need to be

finished, because we understand each other anyway and the essence would

wither and die if we tried – Kjell’s works give us a beginning, never more

than a beginning. That does not make his works easy to decipher. The viewer

simply has to put up with many loose ends, a great deal of uncertainty. And

yet, it is precisely what is not there but is left open that makes all the

difference, that means that something tangential to the work vibrates, is

alive.

In Kjell’s works, nothing is taken for granted. He surprises us. What we

accept at first glance to be coincidental factors often turn out to be

carefully thought-out elements. The sharp gaze, the one we use when we

want to understand – and which we often routinely aim at the facade, at

the object on top of the plinth – in Kjell’s works, that gaze goes astray,

it is discreetly corrected and gently adjusted. Kjell resets the focus for

us, he suggests a sensitive wide-angle perspective.

(fig. 2)

Kjell directs our perceptive attention to things in the periphery, the things

we see in the corner of our eye. He encourages us to consider what is primary

and what is secondary, what is front and what is back, what is the work

and what is not – in short, what we choose to focus on, and why (fig. 2).

More than anything, an encounter with Kjell’s recent works is therefore an

exercise in conscious perception, an exercise in manoeuvring our gaze towards

the hitherto overlooked, towards that which appears at the edges of our field

of vision.

page number:

file:

document:

author:

dd-mm-yyyy:

83 / 104


Street Ware: A series of cups in paper and porcelain

Jorunn Veiteberg

25-02-2012

In the documentary The September Issue, which is about life inside American

Vogue, the expensively dressed and imperious editor, Anna Wintour, likes

to wander around carrying a big paper cup – often one with the Starbucks

logo. This detail represents something of a breach of style in a milieu that

puts great emphasis on superficial elegance and glamour, but it also serves

as a symbol of an absent food culture. Even though Starbucks serves good,

expensive coffee, a paper cup is primarily associated with beverages people

resort to when on the move. A generation ago, it would probably have been

unthinkable to drink a cup of coffee while hurrying along a city street.

Now it is a common sight, and disposable paper cups have replaced china

cups. As the title of one of Kjell Rylander’s objects, Street Ware, tells

us, this reality is his point of departure. The piece is part of a series

that consists of trampled disposable mugs, picked up from the street or from

a rubbish bin. They bear clear traces of their previous use, and several of

them feature brown coffee stains.

One cup (fig. 1) stands out from the other anonymous white or brown cups.

It comes from the Swedish branch of the American fast food chain McDonald’s.

Specialising in hamburgers, McDonald’s quickly expanded to the rest of the

world, and it remains one of the biggest players in the fast food market.

It opened in Sweden in 1973, but the paper mug in question was first produced

in 2005. On 1 March that year, McDonald’s launched ‘quality coffee’ as a new

beverage in its restaurants in Sweden. The new quality is signalled by the

pattern on the mug. Many Swedes will recognise it as Berså, a pattern drawn

by the designer Stig Lindberg for Gustavbergs porcelain factory in 1960.

(fig. 1)

When Stig Lindberg (1916-1982) designed Berså, he had already been working

for Gustavbergs for many years. He was only 21 years old when he came to the

factory and in 1949 he took over as artistic director, a job he held until

1980. He was also head lecturer in ceramics at Konstfack for a long time,

as well as making his mark as a designer in other fields. Stig Lindberg

is therefore a name that stands out in Swedish design history. Berså, the

most popular service he designed, was produced in bone china, a high status

page number:

file:

document:

author:

dd-mm-yyyy:

85 / 104



Jorunn Veiteberg

25-02-2012

material. However, the decor was not dishwasher-friendly, and once such

appliances became more and more common in Swedish homes, sales stagnated.

Gustavbergs stopped production in 1974, ironically the year after McDonald’s

opened in Sweden.

The Berså pattern, with its stylised foliage in optimistic green, was

launched around the same time as the idea of ‘folkhemmet’ (‘folk-home’ or

‘the people’s home’), a metaphor for the modern welfare society, had united

Sweden ideologically.(1) This concept enshrines the whole social democratic

vision of society: instead of promoting class struggle, the nation should be

understood as a community founded on democracy and equality where everyone

shows consideration for each other and cooperates. With his strong position

as a designer during the 1950s and 1960s, Stig Lindberg became the person

who visualised the idea of ‘folkhemmet’ most clearly.

When a multinational company like McDonald’s is so bold as to borrow

such a culturally charged pattern as Berså, the question of why immediately

springs to mind. It was not McDonald’s that came up with the idea of printing

the Berså pattern on paper cups, however, but the young designers Linda

Solvang, Anna Johansson and Anna Mörner. ‘We wondered about how people

socialise around a cup of a coffee today,’ they said in an interview, and

their conclusion was: ’Nowadays, you don’t sit around drinking from a coffee

service, but drink your coffee on the run from a paper mug.’(2) Trend queen

Anna Wintour could not agree more. So, they combined a familiar and cherished

decor with a contemporary paper cup and then contacted McDonald’s ‘because

they symbolise modern society, which makes for an exciting contrast with the

classic pattern’.(3) For McDonald’s, Berså had connotations with both quality

and Swedishness, and they got these two values into the bargain by borrowing

the pattern. Many of their customers had drunk good coffee from Berså cups,

so the nostalgia effect should not be underestimated either. However, as

ceramics connoisseur Garth Clark has emphasised, it is a distinctive feature

of Rylander’s choice of already made things that, even though they are often

taken from the sphere of the kitchen, it is not ‘household dishes that are

piled with sentimentality’ that he chooses.(4) His variation on the Berså

theme stands out here with its clear reference to the past and its melan-

cholic undertone. We recognise the pattern and the paper cup, but it is no

longer a utility object. Lying crumpled and discarded, the cup points to the

pressure the welfare society is currently under. This example shows that even

modest objects can embody a bigger narrative and function as both things and

symbols.

The cups that make up the raw materials for the Street Ware series are not

just any old used cups Rylander has found and exhibited. They have also been

reworked. This is a process that ’is more about destroying than creating’,

as Norwegian author Karl Ove Knausgård says about the writing process.(5)

page number:

file:

document:

author:

dd-mm-yyyy:

87 / 104



Jorunn Veiteberg

25-02-2012

Creating is used here in the sense of making up or portraying something that

does not already exist. Rylander both deconstructs and rebuilds. The bases

of many of the paper cups have been replaced by a crazed fragment from a

porcelain cup, while parts from handles stick out like amputated arms. In

some cases, he has attached thin, sawn-off circles from the top of one cup

to another cup, so that it has ’memories of other cups attached to it’.(6)

The combination of paper and porcelain gives rise to an evocative contrast:

a disposable cup designed for a quick drink on the move is contrasted with

the remains of a porcelain coffee service, with the associations this has

with social get-togethers around a finely laid table. We are thus reminded

that it is ceramics that are his point of departure, but also of a new age

with new forms of socialising and ways of living. This shift in values is

what the Street Ware series is about (fig. 2).

Despite the dissection his work method involves, he gives the cups

permanent life through the creative act of choosing them, and, not least,

by giving them status as art. But their value as art is not the only added

value they have acquired. By being given new meaning they have also taken on

a critical function, not least in relation to the conventions that apply in

the fields concerned, but also in relation to society as a whole. In my view,

their new value and relevance primarily lie in this function as critical

objects. The Street Ware series forces us to reflect on all the waste we

produce and on the market economy that demands that things be constantly

renewed and replaced. Because of their lack of utility value, they also

demonstrate that, rather than creating status symbols, the craft artist’s

job is to ’ask carefully crafted questions and make us think,’ as Anthony

Dunne and Fiona Raby say about critical design.(7) This is a view that

several theoreticians have advocated. This applies not least to Ezra Shales,

(fig. 2)

who has challenged the romanticism that prevails in certain ceramics circles

and argued in favour of also focusing on the histories and materials that

the industry has brought to the discipline. That is precisely what Rylander

has done, and in his choice of mass-produced cups as a raw material, he has

page number:

file:

document:

author:

dd-mm-yyyy:

89 / 104



Jorunn Veiteberg

25-02-2012

demonstrated the truth of Shales’ assertion that ’craft is about tinkering

with historical traditional and conventional social habits, but giving old

needs new handles’.(8)

The process of change that Street Ware addresses can easily lead us to

conclude that what emerges victorious is what can be made and handled most

quickly, whether we are talking about food, beverages or things. While this

perspective can be very useful, it is nonetheless too simplistic. Reality

is not always unambiguous and developments not always so progressive. The

same year that McDonald’s launched paper cups decorated with the Berså

pattern, Gustavbergs porcelain factory relaunched its Berså service in a

dishwasher friendly material. McDonald’s use of the Berså pattern was part

of the factory’s branding campaign and no coincidence. It gave them a lot

of attention and revitalised the popularity of the pattern. So, despite all

their social differences, McDonald’s and Gustavbergs were able to make mutual

use of each other, just as Rylander utilises paper and porcelain taken from

rubbish bins and kitchen cupboards.

NOTES

1) It was the politician Per Albin Hansson who introduced ‘folkhemmet’ into

social democratic rhetoric in his speech ‘Folkhemmet, medborgarhemmet’

(‘The Folk-Home, The Citizens-Home’) in 1928.

2) www.mcdonalds.se

3) Ibid.

4) Garth Clark, ‘Art Applied’, in: Object Factory II: The Art of Industrial

Ceramics. New York: Museum of Art and Design, 2009, p. 14.

5) Karl Ove Knausgård, Min kamp 1, Oslo: Oktober 2009, p. 197.

6) Edmund de Waal, The Pot Book, London: Phaidon 2011, p. 236.

7) Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby, Design Noir: The Secret Life of Electronic

Objects, Basel: August/Birkhäuser 2001, p. 58.

8) Ezra Shales, ‘Technophilic craft’, American Craft, April/May 2008.

See: http://craftcouncil.org/magazine/article/technophilic-craft

page number:

file:

document:

author:

dd-mm-yyyy:

91 / 104


About the Authors

Jorunn Veiteberg

25-02-2012

Glenn Adamson

Glenn Adamson is Deputy Head of Research and Head of Graduate Studies at the

Victoria and Albert Museum in London where he also co-curated the exhibition

Postmodernism: Style and Subversion 1970–1990 in 2011. He is co-editor of the

triannual Journal of Modern Craft, and the author of Thinking Through Craft

(2010) and The Craft Reader (2010).

Glen R. Brown

Glen R. Brown is a Professor of Art History and Associate Head of the Art

Department at Kansas State University, USA. He has written extensively on

historical and contemporary ceramics and is a member of the International

Academy of Ceramics in Geneva.

Gabi Dewald

Gabi Dewald was editor of the German-based Keramik Magazin Europa/Ceramics

Magazine Europe 1993-2009. In 2001 she received the Ceramic Art Foundation

New York Award (for critical writing). She initiated Think Tank An European

Initiative for the Applied Arts in 2004. Beside working as a free-lance

writer, she is currently leader of Culture and Tourism in the city Lorsch,

Germany.

Caroline Slotte

Caroline Slotte is an artist living in Helsinki, Finland. She was a research

fellow in ceramics at Bergen Academy of Arts and Design, Norway 2007-2011.

The artistic part of her project Second Hand Stories is documented in the

catalogue Closer, 2011. She is represented in the museum collections of

V&A, London; MAD New York; West Norway Museum of Decorative Arts, Bergen to

mention a few.

Jorunn Veiteberg

Jorunn Veiteberg has a PhD in art history and is currently adjunct professor

at Bergen Academy of Arts and Design, Norway. She is a member of Think Tank

A European Initiatives for the Applied Arts. Among her books are Craft

in Transition, 2005 and she has edited Things Tang Trash: Upcycling in

Contemporary Ceramics, 2011.

page number:

file:

document:

author:

dd-mm-yyyy:

93 / 104


CV

Kjell Rylander

25-02-2012

Kjell Rylander, born 1964 in Nyköping, lives and works in Stockholm, Sweden.

www.kjellrylander.com

Education:

Research Fellow Bergen National Academy of the Arts 2009-2011

Konstfack, Stockholm, Sweden. MFA 1996-2001

Capellagården, Öland, Sweden 1994-1996

Selected exhibitions:

2012

Rogaland Contemporary Art Centre (RCA), White, Stavanger, Norway

Gustavsbergs Konsthall, Making Knowledge, Gustavsberg, Sweden

2011

Gallery Room8, Kontentum, Bergen, Norge (solo)

West Norway Museum of Decorative Arts, Thing, Tang, Trash, Bergen, Norway

2010

Galleri Kunst1, Sandvika, Norway

Galleri F-15, Tendenser: Craft Revisited, Moss, Norway

Galerie Favardin & de Verneuil, Le Cru & Le Cuit, Paris, France

Eskilstuna Konstmuseum, porträtt av det anonyma, Eskilstuna, Sweden (solo)

Think Tank, Speed, IMH Internationale Handwerksmesse, Munich, Germany;

Galleri Format, Bergen, Norway

2009

Trøndelag Center of Contemporary Art, Ånden og materien – tendenser

og utvikling i kontemporær keramisk kunst, Trondheim, Norway

Kammerhof Galerie, 06th Think Tank exhibition: Speed, Gmunden, Austria

Lodz Design Festival, Non Objective: Contemporary Ceramics

Exhibition, Poland

Cheongju International Craft Biennale, Dissolving Views, South Korea

Gallery Puls, Brussels, Belgium

Kulturhuset, The State of Things, Stockholm, Sweden

MAD Museum of Art and Design, Object Factory II, New York, USA

Yellowstone Art Museum, Voices, Montana, United States

Form/Design Center, Tingens talan i teoriernas tid, Malmö, Sweden

2008

House of Sweden, Voices, Washington, USA

Gallery Artisin, Everyday Life, Jyväskylä, Finland

95 / 104


CV

Kjell Rylander

25-02-2012

page number:

file:

document:

author:

dd-mm-yyyy:

Design Museum, Voices, Gent, Belgium

Gardiner Museum, Object Factory, Toronto, Canada

Gallery Norsu, Everyday Life, Helsinki, Finland

2007

Drud & Koppe Gallery, Functional Art, Copenhagen, Denmark

National Museum of Decorative Arts, Everyday Life, Trondheim, Norway

14 th International Ceramic Biennale, Chateauroux, France

Gallery IngerMolin, Stockholm, Sweden (solo)

Centre Culturel Suédois, Voices, Paris, France

2006

Gallery c2, Shanghai, China (solo)

Berlinale, Half A Minutes DFP, Berlin Film Festival, Berlin, Germany

Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe, Voices – Contemporary Ceramic Art from

Sweden, Hamburg, Germany

Design Annual, Shots on Brave New World DFP, Frankfurt, Germany

2005

Bienal de Lisboa, ExperimentaDesign, Crispy, Lisbon, Portugal

Designmai, Shots on Brave New World, Designfilm pool, Berlin, Germany

Gallery Roger Björkholmen, Stuff, Stockholm, Sweden

Meyerhoff Gallery, TheSwedishShow, Baltimore, USA

Whitwort Art Gallery, Beauty and Beast, Manchester, UK

2004

FLICAM, World Emerging Artist´s, Fuping, Xian, China

Crafts Council Gallery, Beauty and Beast, London, UK

Gallery Andrén-Schiptjenko, Hemma hos;Fredrik, Stockholm, Sweden

Sjöhistoriska museet, Subjektiva perspektiv, Modern Talking,

Stockholm, Sweden

2003

Akershus Kunstnersenter, Lillestrøm, Norway (solo)

Gallery IngerMolin, Stockholm, Sweden (solo)

Museum of Decorative Arts and Design, Swedish Contemporary Ceramics,

Oslo, Norway

Enkehuset, Modern Talking, Stockholm, Sweden

2002

Stockholm Art Fair, Agata, Independent design, Stockholm, Sweden

Magasin 3/Djurgårdsbrunns värdshus, ceramic objects, collaboration

97 / 104


CV

Kjell Rylander

25-02-2012

page number:

file:

document:

author:

dd-mm-yyyy:

with Uglycute, Stockholm, Sweden

Svensk Form, Agata, Independent design, Stockholm, Sweden

2001

Gallery Deluxe, Swedish style in Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan

Gallery Konstfack, MFA-exhibition, Stockholm, Sweden

Public collections:

National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design, Oslo, Norway

West Norway Museum of Decorative Arts, Bergen, Norway

National Museum of Fine Arts, Stockholm, Sweden

National Museum of Decorative Arts, Trondheim, Norway

FLICAM Museum, Fuping Xian, China

The Architect Association of Stockholm, Sweden

National Public Art Council, Stockholm, Sweden

The Röhsska Museum of Fashion, Design and Decorative Arts, Sweden

Selected bibliography:

2011

Edmund de Waal, The Pot Book, London: Phaidon.

Søren Kjørup: “Hvordan tingene taler. Ting som tegn og tekst,”

Kunst og Kultur no. 4.

Jorunn Veiteberg, “Ting i transitt. Kjell Rylanders keramiske

undersøkingar”, Kunst og Kultur no. 4.

Veiteberg, Jorunn (ed.), Thing Tang Trash. Upcycling in Contemporary

Ceramics, Bergen: Bergen National Academy of the Arts and Art

Museums Bergen.

Anne Britt Ylvisåker, “Tingen og æva – flyktig kunst møter museet”,

Thing Tang Trash. Bergen: Bergen National Academy of the Arts and

Art Museums Bergen.

Glen R. Brown, “Kjell Rylander: The Anthropic Aura”, Ceramics Monthly,

June/July/August.

Jorunn Veiteberg, “Fra trash til treasure”, Biennalen for

Kunsthåndværk og Design.

Kolding: Museet på Koldinghus/Danske Kunsthåndværkere.

Reinhold Ziegler, “Oppvinning nå!”, khVerk no. 1.

2010

Pascale Nobécourt, “Uberørt materialisme”, khVerk no 4.

Jan Kokkin,, “Kunsthåndverk = Kunst?”, Kunst no. 3.

Jorunn Veiteberg, “Frå rusk og rask til readymades: Kunstnarar og

99 / 104


CV

Kjell Rylander

25-02-2012

page number:

file:

document:

author:

dd-mm-yyyy:

teoretikarar samarbeider i nytt FoU-prosjekt”, Kunsthøgskolen i Bergen

Årbok 2010, Bergen.

Luckner-Bien, Renate, “Bewegung in vielschichtigem terrain Think Tank”,

Art Aurea no. 2, June.

Cristina Karlstam, “Vardaglig verklighet vrids extra varv”, Eskilstuna

Kuriren 20 March.

Lotta Jonson, “Rylander utforskar keramikens väsen”, DN, 18 March.

Jorunn Veiteberg, “Continuity and Collapse: Ceramics in a post-

industrial era”, Possibility and Losses. London: Crafts Council/MIMA.

Jorunn Veiteberg, “Speed as stimulation, or reflections on a coffee

cup”, Benjamin Lignel and Jorunn Veiteberg (eds.): Speed Exhibition

and Publication 2009, Gmunden: Think Tank Publication 06.

2009

Garth Clark, “Art Applied”, Object Factory, New York: MAD.

Agnieszka Knap, ed., Sakernas Tillstånd, Stockholm: Konsthantverkscentrum.

Monica Larsson, ed., Tingens Talan i Teoriernas Tid, Stockholm: Sveriges

Konstföreningar.

Glen R. Brown, 500 Ceramic Sculptures, New York/London: Lark Books.

Jorunn Veiteberg, “Kunsten å låna”, Kunst og Kultur no.1.

Love Jönsson, “New routes for ceramics”, The 2008 Gmunden Ceramics

Symposium, Gmunden.

2008

Cristopher Correa, “Swedish Made Easy”, The Washington Post 8 October.

Judith S. Schwartz, Confrontational Ceramics, University of

Pennsylvania Press.

Jennie Fahlström, Konstperspektiv no. 2.

2007

Anja Johansen, “Hverdagsliv”, Billedkunst no. 7.

Glen R. Brown, “Multiplicity, Debasement & Redemption”, Ceramics: Art and

Perception no. 70.

Breaking the Mould: New Approaches to Ceramics, London: Black Dog Publishing.

Andreas Nobel, “Kaffekultur”, Vi, September.

Céramique contemporaine, Chateauroux: Musées de Chateauroux, France.

Bo Madestrand, “3 × kritikerns val”, Dagens Nyheter 25 March.

Calle Arvidsson, “Fula koppar blir vackra”, Svenska Dagbladet 17 March.

Vincent Poinas, “Céramique Ironique”, Citizen K International, Autumn 06.

2006

Fia Fjelde, “Formgivare utan gränser”, Seasons no. 3.

101 / 104


CV

Kjell Rylander

25-02-2012

page number:

file:

document:

author

dd-mm-yyyy:

Love Jönsson, “Ombytta roller”, FORM no. 5.

Sara Danius, “Bordsporslinet styr hur vi umgås”, Dagens Nyheter 6 August.

Ulf Beckman, FORM no. 2.

Voices: Contemporary ceramic art from Sweden. Text: Sara Danius, Stockholm:

Carlsson Bofrörlag.

2005

Jorunn Veiteberg, “Objects in transition: The Ceramic Art of Kjell

Rylander”, Ceramics Art and Perception, no. 61.

Malin Vessby, “Debatt om svenskt konsthantverk”, SvD, 6 September.

Jeanne Quinn, “Not ideas about the thing, but the thing itself”,

Keramik Magazin, no. 3.

Emily Campbell, “My World, New Craft Experimenta”, Lisboa: Bienal de Lisboa.

Jorunn Veiteberg, Craft in Transion, Bergen: Bergen National Academy of the

Arts.

Love Jönsson (ed.), Craft in Dialogue. Six views on a practice in change,

Stockholm: IASPIS.

Hanna Ljungström, Ulf Beckman (eds.), RE:FORM. Contemporary Swedish Crafts,

Stockholm: Arvinius.

Dennis Dahlqvist, “Schizofrenesi”, Expressen 8 January.

Bo Madestrand, “‘Grejer’ som syns”, Dagens Nyheter 17 April.

Malin Vessby, “Prylar med budskap och effektfulla hålrum”, SvD, 23 April.

Cecilie N. Seiness, “Mellom design og biletkunst”, Dag og Tid 3 December.

Lesley Jackson, “The porcelain revolution”, ICON, no. 022.

2004

Lesley Jackson, “Hot Swedish designers”, ICON no. 010.

Lesley Jackson, “Subjective Objects”, Ceramics in society, no. 57.

I-Chi HSU, FLICAM, China.

2003

Malin Vessby, “Det opålitliga”, FORM no. 6.

Malin Vessby, “Självbiografiskt”, FORM no. 4.

Jorunn Veiteberg, “Slutt for kunsthandverket?”, Kunsthåndverk no. 2.

2001

Helgesson Susanne, “Form att minnas 2001”, FORM no. 6.

Hedqvist Hedvig, “Swedish style in Tokyo”, Svenska Dagbladet, October.

Bundegard Christian, “Ud af kuvøsen”, Politiken, 20 June.

Helgesson Susanne, “Leve kollektivismen”, FORM no. 4.

page number:

file:

document:

author:

dd-mm-yyyy:

103 / 104


Colophone

Jorunn Veiteberg

25-02-2012

Editor:

Jorunn Veiteberg

Translation:

Douglas Ferguson/Allegro (from Norwegian), Gabriella Berggren (from

Swedish), David Springall/Linea (from German)

Design:

Research and Development

Printing:

TMG Sthlm

Publisher:

Bergen Academy of Art and Design, Gustavsbergs Konsthall

Copyright:

Kjell Rylander and the authors, Stockholm, 2012

Glen R. Brown’s article was originally published in Ceramics Monthly

(www.ceramicsmonthly.org). Reproduced with permission. Copyright,

the American Ceramic Society.

ISBN 978-91-980286-0-7

Photo credits:

Joakim Bergström (cover, pp. 5-10, 13-34), Øystein Klakegg (pp. 37-44),

Ernst Grilnberger (p. 83), Jan Höglund (p. 57, 63, 71), Håkan Lidman

(p. 57, 61), Hanna Tønsberg (p. 73).

This catalogue has been made possible by the kind support of The Research

Council of Norway, Estrid-Ericsons Stiftelse and Stiftelsen Längmanska

kulturfonden.

r&d | kjell rylander archives

Documents

paper handles

porcelain handles

paper plates

unfired porcelain

porcelain details

a4 sheet of paper

porcelain mug

porcelain rods