But all they found were tide lines

 

The series But all they found were tide lines consist of troughs on the floor, in which ceramics are placed. the almost coffin sized pedestals are an integral part of the the work and contain salt water which enables a reaction in Sturla’s high fired ceramic works, rendering the works as time based pieces. Through his experiments in the studio he understood that high fired ceramics, despite their vitrification are still porous enough to allow from of osmosis to happen as the ceramic sit in water. Over the duration of the exhibition, the works are developing and changing and absorbing some of the salty water solution, and as a result they sweat out salt crystals. The base of the objects is coated with a clay and mineral solution, which, over the course of the show, will crumble and disintegrate.

 

The visual language of the ceramic sculptures is teetering and seems to be part industrial, mechanical, part car engine, part architecture. They illustrate the fallacy between technological precision and our (in)ability to recall and visually digest space, function or logic.

 

Sturla, fascinated by history and archaeology, thinks about how we understand previous societies and civilizations by reconstructing fragments, utilizes leftovers form archaeological dig sites, his practice is driven by questions how an image of a society can be built from sicarded and broken bits of debris.

 

Text by GIANNI MANHATTAN

The clay sculptures of Laurence Sturla have something seemingly familiar and at the same time ghostly about them. Their enigmatic shapes are reminiscent of machine parts or industrial architecture, but also of vessels of unknown origin from an indefinite past. Connected to each other, these elements form their own organisms with openings and perforations, but without any recognizable function or logic. Fascinated with messages that are communicated over time, with the merging of epochs and civilizations, Sturla examines in his work how we connect past, present, and future in order to make statements or forecasts.
The historically charged medium of clay is relevant to this as one of the oldest materials whose limits and potential Sturla explores and exhausts in his work process. The sculptures of the "Past Ones Preserved" (2020) series, for example, were exposed to extremely high temperatures during the firing process until their surfaces cracked, began to melt, and eventually were put into an amorphous form.
Even when fired, ceramics function as a kind of chronometer, as they continue to gain mass by absorbing ambient humidity and, consequently, are datable. In "But All They Found Were Tide Lines" (2020), Sturla takes advantage of this material property. For the duration of the exhibition, the clay soaks up the water in the basins and “sweats” the salt out into a crust that encloses the ceramics, imposing weight and thus history on them. The boundaries between recent and pseudo-archaeological past begin to dissolve and coincide with the present—​​what is true and what is a myth? (Marijana Schneider)

Den Tonskulpturen von Laurence Sturla haftet etwas scheinbar Vertrautes und gleichzeitig Geisterhaftes an. Ihre rätselhaften Formen rufen Erinnerungen an Fragmente von Maschinenteilen, an Industriearchitekturen, aber auch an Gefäße unbekannter Herkunft aus einer unbestimmten Vergangenheit wach. Miteinander verbunden bilden diese Elemente eigene Organismen mit Öffnungen und Durchbrüchen, jedoch ohne erkennbare Funktion und Logik. Fasziniert von Botschaften, die über die Zeit hinweg kommuniziert wurden, von Verschmelzungen der Epochen und Kulturen, geht Sturla mit seinen Arbeiten der Frage nach, wie wir Vergangenes, Gegenwärtiges und Zukünftiges verknüpfen, um Aussagen oder Prognosen zu treffen.
Relevant ist dafür das historisch vielfach aufgeladene Material Ton als einer der ältesten Werkstoffe, dessen Grenzen und Potential Sturla in seinem Arbeitsprozess erforscht und ausreizt. So setzte er die Skulpturen der Serie „Past ones preserved" (2020) beim Brennprozess außergewöhnlich hohen Temperaturen aus, bis ihre Oberflächen rissig wurden, sie zu schmelzen begannen und letztendlich in einer amorphen Gestalt gebannt wurden.
Auch in gebranntem Zustand fungieren Keramiken als eine Art Zeitmesser, da sie durch die Absorption von Luftfeuchtigkeit weiterhin an Masse gewinnen und somit datierbar sind. Mit der Arbeit „But all they found were tide lines" (2020) macht sich Sturla diese Materialeigenschaft zunutze. Über die Dauer der Ausstellung saugt der Ton das Wasser in den Becken auf und „schwitzt“ das Salz zu einer Kruste aus, welche die Keramiken umschließt und ihnen Gewicht und somit Geschichte aufzwingt. Die Grenzen zwischen der jüngsten und der pseudoarchäologischen Vergangenheit beginnen sich aufzulösen und fallen mit der Gegenwart zusammen – was ist wahr und was ist ein Mythos? (Marijana Schneider)