WHEN COLOURS DISSOLVE INTO NOTHINGNESS

Presentation

The Galerie Maria Wettergren is pleased to announce a solo exhibition by Danish ceramic artist Lotte Westphael, titled Where Colours Dissolve Into Weightless Nothingness, which will be on view at the gallery from March 27 to May 23, 2026.

The exhibition will feature a selection of Westphael’s masterful new works, in which colour is not an added element but is inherent to the very structure of the porcelain, like a patchwork, opening new avenues for the art of ceramics.

LOTTE WESTPHAEL

The work of the Danish ceramist Lotte Westphael is based on a personal immersion in a sophisticated technique, unfolded through a graphic universe. Westphael’s ceramic vessels are translucent and delicate, yet with a strong, geometrical expression. Inspired by Bauhaus textiles and the works of Anni Albers, Westphael has developed her personal ceramic technique over the years, using 3 mm thin colored strips of porcelain, which she forms into intricate vertical and horizontal lines. Working two-dimensionally, the patterns are first painstakingly built from the thin porcelain slabs, then delicately assembled into cylindrical vessels. The paintings of Agnes Martin have been a particular inspiration in the development of Westphael’s Gradient sculptures. Their graduated color sequences are obtained by mixing various shades of color through different grids, composed in a smooth transition from light to dark with a separate strip of porcelain for each new color nuance. Westphael investigates systems and principles and the interaction between patterns and colors, yet her works are profoundly poetic. Westphael is interested in the principle behind the Japanese Haiku poem, with its intuitive leap across the gap between the two parts of the poem, a gap where something is intentionally left out. The dwelling on the resulting opening, which divides a Haiku into its two pulsating parts, is a source of inspiration to Westphael, enlightening the vibrating, emotional quality of her ceramic art.

Lotte Westphael studied at the Ceramics and Glass Department of Kolding School of Art and Design between 1988 and 1993. In addition to this, she studied in several Japanese ceramic workshops. Westphael debuted her work at Charlottenborg’s Spring Exhibition in 2016, and received the Arts and Crafts Prize of 1879, Hetsch Medal the same year. She has since exhibited throughout Europe and the United States, including the American Museum of Ceramic Art, USA; the Danish Cultural Institute in St. Petersburg, Russia; Kagoshima Museum, Japan; Hjorths Museum, Denmark; Albrechtsburg Meissen, Germany; Magnelli Vallauris Museum, France; Sofienholm, Denmark; Galerie Maria Wettergren, Paris, France; Design Miami Basel, Switzerland; PAD London, England; TEFAF Maastricht, The Netherlands; 5th Triennale of Kogei in Kanazawa at 21st Century Museum of Art, Japan; and European Prize of Applied Arts, Belgium.