ceramic sculpture

Ceramic Sculpture is the essence of the author’s mastery: they are ceramic objects; they are sculpting that fills a hand and gains scale; they are a formal detail, which is color, which is skin; that it is a cat; a snow white; a story of enchantment… In a sculptural tale, she highlights her eternal presence, the Princess who is, in her heart, always a dream and the imaginary that has accompanied her since she was a girl. As an adult, Frida Kalo appears, also her repeated “princess”. An artistic reference, a woman strength and always idealistic. Pessoa, Frida Kalo are always like that, even when they say goodbye to the earth, because their work endures when it is revived by Teresa Cortez.

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ceramic jars

In her ceramic jars, Teresa Cortez gives shape to the terracotta adjusting unlikely configurations. Her hands model representations of the animal world, of nature or simply a face. These are circular, cylindrical, more or less oval, almost spherical volumetric shapes which, in high-relief, lodge their residents. Floral motifs, heart-shaped roses, daisies, colourful ornaments of nature, feminine faces, individually or in circular groups, with straight or braided hair, birds, toads, beetles, pigs sprouting in every pot. To shape every sculptural object is to grasp a meaning, a physiognomy, an appearance inscribed in the matter addressed. The future to come is the outcome of the involvement, the touch that kneads, metamorphosing. The organic matter, emerging from the earthly body, engages our senses. The terracotta, shaped by the hands of the artist, acquires an aesthetic value as sculptural object. It excites in us a wider-reaching glance, with each volume joining the hollowing of each jar, of each container.

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chairs and sofas

The explanation goes on and on and continues in the sofa and in bed. More or less naked bodies, with cats and people, exude freedom. A toad and a donkey, both sitting on chairs, facing each other or back to back? An elephant that looks like a zebra and a little girl with a red ribbon on her head; in a sofa, wearing knitwear that looks like giraffe skin, it snuggles with a real giraffe; Marylyn Monroe, even sitting, sports her flying skirt; the men and the woman, the cats have a human presence; a chubby girl plays with a chubby pig. Elders, youth and children, they are all part of the most friendly habitat.

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bathtub in ceramics

In the bathtub the author explores the value of laid bare freedom, unencumbered by prejudice, the discovery of open friendship, the water as a blanket that covers our body, as therapy for the mind, for the sound clean body, with the most alluring fragrance for the senses. In the bath tub, do body and mind submerge and is our very own identity built anew? This challenge is presented here as a caricature of our daily life, in which the narrative we come across in Teresa Cortez’s bath tubs has no barriers: a fully clothed little girl rides a peacock which, galloping, plunges into the core of the bath tub; another one, with a pair of long braids, takes a glance, in her thoughts, at the horizon; a red bird and a little girl have an eye-to-eye chat; a young woman in a bikini, stretched out on top of a monkey, appears to bathe in the bluest dream; a variety of people and animals populate the blue, more translucent flow. Roosters, chickens, peacocks, a rabbit, a naked woman, Fernando Pessoa, a nun in the full habit, bath tub Reading.

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© 2020 - 2023, Teresa Cortez