New objects by Beatrijs van Rheeden. Appeared in Art&Perception Technical, jan 2007 The first thing that strikes me seeing the new works of Beatrijs van Rheeden, is the use of colour. In some pieces she coloured the porcelain through and through with cobaltoxides. In her former works she used to be rather timid with colour. She sometimes gave little strips of colour, blue and sometimes green in the ribs that connected the walls, but always very minimal, so that only the very attentive was awarded with an extra dimension. Sometimes there was only a fine line on the very thin walls that gave an accent in blue or very rarely in yellow. These details could stress a suggestion of movement in the work, or they could instigate a movement themselves by the way they were applicated. Beatrijs van Rheeden still applies this subtle use of colour, but a firmer colouring is now also in evidence. The direct result is that the pieces appear to have a more robust presence, the fragility and translucence are less important. In her earlier works of porcelain the structures she showed where the main thing, shown as pieces on the wall or lying down. In her new work it seems like she has found another way to present these structures, by cupping them in a container-like form that holds up these structures. In the article that I wrote in Ceramics,Art and Perception of december 2000, I mentioned her vases, that she used to make during her studies at Academie Minerva. These vases she pinched up from regular clay into extremely thin walls. The same technique she now uses for these porcelain forms. This combination of cilinder-like forms put together with her typical structures is like a fusion between this very early work and her latest developments. These latest pieces were most often part of a sphere and very organic in appearance. Among her newest pieces she has taken a square from the spheric form, and has built an almost cubic container form. This also reminds me of earlier work of Beatrijs. Around 1994 she worked with very strict geometrical forms, and it seems she is looking for a different perspective to present her work in. In the summer of 2004 in Vichte (Belgium) she presented an installation of porcelain elements, also in a very strict geometrical outline. For instance the work ‘Raam III’ from 2005 shows the cubic form integrated within the one piece. In this way it becomes a kind of entrance into another world. I imagine looking through a window, or looking at a television. The association with more organic forms is not so apparent in these forms, although still in evidence in the series called ‘Fusion’. In choosing titles like ‘window’ and ‘fusion’ she directs the looker on more decicively than before, when she preferred to give titles that were more ambiguous. By calling a series of works ‘Fusion’, which in form one can recognize as cooling towers of a fusionreactor, she clearly pushes one to think in this direction. In her earlier work the pieces as well as the titles seemed more contemplative. Titles like ‘light’, ‘dusk’, or ‘content’ can make the mind wander in several directions, but a piece called ‘fusion’ that looks like the cooling tower of a reactor makes me think of one thing only. However her choice of this title ‘fusion’ is indeed ambiguous in meaning. For her the word ‘fusion’ means literally the fusion of different worlds, the closed form combined with the open structure, the older work combined with the new, and also fusion in the meaning of melting, as she makes the form move, and literally melt down a little.Beatrijs’s latest pieces are lying on their side,showing both the closed form and the open structure. The most outer wall has been expanded into a independent form that holds inside the structure. The structure seems to be the bottom although here all eyes will move to because here is the well known intricate play of lines and ribs and rithme and order. By presenting the pieces on their side this seems to be the opening of the form, even strengthened by the spiraling movement. If however you look through the opening of the cilinder-like form one can see it as the crowning of the piece. Her latest series of pieces ‘Blue’ is a series apart. Any sign of her well-known structures is gone, and only the reactor-like forms are still standing. Strengening ribs have been moved to the outside of the form, becoming almost decorative in appearance. Giving these pieces the title ‘blue’ give me all freedom of association, and I think of cilinder formed korals, and paper. The fusion that Beatrijs van Rheeden has accomplished between her old and her new works, shows that she can again and again open up new views towards new possibilities. Gertjan van der Stelt, is a collegue ceramicist in the Netherlands. Back