With her majolica Ledgerwood emphasizes the different layers of meaning of the vase: it is an icon of the domestic everyday life, a sculpture and a relief carrier as well as the documentation of a performative process. In the dimensions as realized by the artist, it also becomes a metaphor for the human body. Each of the vessels is furnished with a variation of the quatrefoil motif or the diamond pattern. The glaze is sometimes applied in a translucent way, sometimes more opaque, often with a high-contrast coloring of the interior and exterior, and when choosing the colors the artist always takes into account their traditional meaning. Often, she adds luxurious metallic silver or gold tones, leaving the edges of the vessels raw in turn, creating a tense dialogue between the simple material and the decorative appearance of the haptically attractive objects.

The motifs of quatrefoil and diamond are repeated in the paintings in our exhibition. It is not without reason that Ledgerwood has used these shapes in her work: they played a significant role in Stone Age cultures that worshipped goddesses. In her paintings, the artist joins the single motifs into irregularly shaped grids and permits color to drip outside the grid structure, adding an element of real time to the many other experiences available when viewing the paintings, such as after-image and optical fatigue. Furthermore, her carpet-fringe-like traces of liquid paint become a fresh reinterpretation of the so-called «dripping» with which the American Abstract Expressionists celebrated success in the 1950s.

Thus, our exhibition illustrates how Judy Ledgerwood's incredibly sensuous works are based on a conceptual approach that, «beyond beauty», tells the story of painting, the symbolism of colors and shapes, and the invigorating effect of imperfection.

Deborah Keller

Accompanying the exhibition, Häusler Contemporary has published a brochure designed by Peter Zimmermann which documents the Nymphenburg ceramics.