ROMAN AND WILLIAMS GUILD GALLERY PRESENTS MONOCHROME SERIES WORKS BY LUDMILLA BALKIS ONLINE EXHIBITION

Guild Gallery is pleased to present an online exhibition of works of ceramic artist Ludmilla Balkis. Monochrome Series explores Balkis’s unglazed, free-flowing shapes, which reveal her sculptures in their simplest form. The artist lives and works in Ahetze, France, and has shown in galleries in Paris, Biarritz, and the Centre Culturel of Vaucresson. Balkis previously worked as Fashion Designer at Celine, and takes a similar approach to clay as she once did to fabric, almost dancing with the clay so that the borders between it and the body fall away. Her resulting thin-walled sculpture vessels capture the feeling of movement and the natural essence of clay. The exhibition is on view December 6, 2021 – January 30, 2022 at Guild Gallery’s website, rwguildgalleryny.com.

While working with Phoebe Philo at Celine in London, Balkis was influenced by the minimalist yet luxurious aesthetic of the brand. After the frantic pace of the fashion world, Balkis took a different direction that led her to the grounded reality of ceramics. She began studying with London-based ceramics artist Freya Bramble Carter in 2014. In 2017, she returned to France, where she was introduced to the Japanese approach to clay by a teacher who had studied and worked in Japan. Here her work began to be informed by the allure of elegant imperfection.

Continuing her search for a more profound connection with the fundamentals, Balkis settled in the Basque country in the southwest of France, a place of raw, natural beauty. Deepening her connection with the Japanese approach, she began studying under the great tea master Rizü Takahashi, who lives in Toulouse, France, and teaches his technique and philosophy based on the interrelationship of earth and fire, and the existential pleasure of restraint.

In her desire to find the balance between function and beauty, Balkis’s vessel sculptures are freely formed constructions, as she relies on her intuition to find the movement in the clay. Generally uncolored, the clay is left unglazed to reveal its purity. Sometimes the artist brushes the rims with oxides to accentuate their thinness. On the surface, the clay retains its roughness. As at Celine, the timeless principles of minimalism inform Balkis’s art.

More than ever, contact with the earth and nature is at the heart of Balkis’s endeavor, and her search for pure simplicity and imperfection continues.

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Ludmilla Balkis (b. 1981) is a ceramic artist based in Ahetze, France. Balkis studied Fashion and Art History at the Studio Berçot school in Paris. She subsequently worked at Celine with Phoebe Philo as Fashion Designer. Balkis studied ceramic art with the London-based ceramics artist Freya Bramble Carter in 2014, and later with the great tea master Rizü Takahashi. Balkis has shown her work in exhibitions in Vaucresson, Paris, and Biarritz, France, and Berlin, Germany.

 
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