"Kera-Miken"
900 ceramic shapes, fired and partly painted
Strictly speaking, the ‘Kera-Miken’ are shapes of raw material that accumulate in the production process of ceramic castings.
In the production of stoneware or ceramic construction elements, large plaster moulds are filled with liquid ceramic material through so called casting chimneys that are fixed to the filling openings of the negative forms (moulds). Once the moulds are saturated with ceramic material, the casting chimneys are taken off and the rest material is returned to the slip to be used for the next casting.
Not so with the 900 ‘Kera-Miken’.
They are the original shapes of the rest material that were taken out of the chimneys by hand and stored to dry slowly, then fired.
Temporary shapes produced during ceramic casting processes were transformed to artistic ‘Kera-Miken’.
Gallery Idelmann, Gelsenkirchen