Liz Larner 2022

Since the 1980’s, Liz Larner (b. 1960) explores and extends the conditions and possibilities of sculpture. Her works are informed by the relationship between object, viewer and their surroundings as well as a deep interest in manifold materials and their particular qualities. Here, the artist puts a focus on the changes and symptoms of decay that certain materials undergo in the course of time. Larner discovered the material of ceramic for her artistic practice in the late 1990’s. Fascinated by the autonomy of this ancient medium, the artist experiments with various compositions and forms. Especially the process of firing and glazing harbours a moment of unpredictability and chance that is significant for the final object and which adds an uncontrollable component to the work with ceramics.

Liz Larner’s earliest sculptural objects resembled experiments that were on the edge of running out of control. Having begun by making photographs of unstable mixtures in Petri Dishes […] and recording their changes, Larner became more interested in the objects themselves rather than the photographs she was making of them. Gradually she became a sculptor rather than a photographer. She has always retained, however, an interest in the instability of form. […] There is part of almost everyone that prizes stability and predictability, but there is also something that revels in decay and decomposition, especially when it happens in a way that can be made visible – where the entropic meets the abject.“