The Cheongju Craft Biennale, an event dating back to 1999, is the world’s best and largest craft biennial with approximately 3,000 artists from 60 countries participating, and an audience of 400,000 visiting each event. It includes all craft disciplines and showcases both Korean and international contemporary authors.
This year, Spain was the invited country: the Soul+Matter exhibition was organized by Fundesarte, the Spanish Crafts Council, and curated by Rubén Torres.
The pieces selected to be exhibited at the Korean Craft Biennale are part of an installation about the 13 moons of the year. Since I wood-fire only three times a year, I fired four moons in each firing, (one for each month) placed in a different area of the kiln.
In this way, the different temperatures and currents of fire inside the kiln would give each moon a different personality related to its month. It was quite an experiment, driven both by chance and intuition.
In this exhibition there are 6 of the 13 moons around a bright sun – one of the most complex wood-fired pieces I’ve ever obtained.
The 31 Spanish creators who participated in the show were Mercedes Vicente (textile, Madrid), Regina Dejiménez (textile, Madrid), Soledad Santisteban (textile, Bilbao), Adriana Meunié (vegetable fibers, Palma de Mallorca), Idoia Cuesta (basketry , Outeiro de Rei, Lugo), Francisco Carrera (embroidery, Seville), Mónica Guilera (basketry, Barcelona), Elisabet Urpí and Nacho Umpiérrez of ‘Eliurpi’ (vegetable fibers, Barcelona), Benjamín Ramírez of ‘Da Capo Escultura’ (marble , Las Pedroñeras, Cuenca), Jean Briac (marble, Barcelona), Roger Coll (ceramics, Badalona, Barcelona), Caterina Roma (ceramics, Lleida), María Oriza (ceramics, Aranda de Duero, Burgos), Myriam Jiménez (ceramics, Madrid), Raúl Mouro (ceramics, Llamas de Mouro, Asturias), Rafael Galindo (ceramics, Vila-Real, Castellón), Fernando Garcés (ceramics, Calatorao, Zaragoza), Raquel Vidal and Pedro Paz from ‘Canoa Lab’ (ceramics, Almería), Stella Rahola (glass, Barcelona), Sara Sorribes (glass, Valencia), Ferran Collado (glass, Barcelona), Marc Monzó (jewelry, Barcelona), José Marín (jewelry, Valencia), Marta Armada (ceramic jewelry, Vigo ), Eva Fortuño (jewellery, Barcelona), Toni Porto (wood, Madrid), Ricardo Tena (metal, Barcelona), Natividad Rodríguez (biomaterial, Jaén), and Victoria Rabal (paper, Barcelona).