Dishing it Out

Rieger’s work consists of thousands of small porcelain bowls which she created on the potter’s wheel in her studio over the past four months. The objects, seemingly small bowls containing little volume, similar to the functional bowls she used to make, now create a whole environment flooding the space from floor to ceiling.

As Rieger steps on the bowls they break under her feet and form a path within the sculptural environment she created. She uses the power of multiplicity to create a route, a path, a new direction, and a possibility for a changing future. It is a ceremony for her break with the functionality of the objects she created as a potter and a symbolic act of seeking a new approach in her work. It represents the inclusion of the functional object into a work of art. The energy released from the actual marching on the objects gives new essentiality to both the material and the creative process. When the small bowls, hanging from the ceiling, touch one another, they produce soft sounds that combine with the sound of breaking bowls as they are stepped on. This was edited into a soundtrack that accompanies the work.

Rieger invited visitors to walk along the paths she created and to experience the movement and sounds.
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Martha Rieger began working on her project “Medusa” during the COVID-19 pandemic, it may be her most personal project to date.

“Medusa” is a work comprised of ceramic objects which seem like octopus limbs, snakes or even horns. The objects are made of three pieces which when joined together form a 135 cm high seemingly moving statue. Their color is watery- a blue-green emerald color, and it gives the impression of a fleeting octopus, rising above sea-level for a second, just to disappear again.

The piece is an a-symmetrical multi-limbed statue (so different from Rieger’s past projects, symmetrical and wheel-thrown),it is inspired by nature. Medusa follows Rieger’s Eggs, Bubbles and Cocoons projects, and seems to reveal to the observer what lurked inside or beneath her past projects.

Rieger had the project’s name in mind before she created it. The Medusa was born from within, buried deep within Rieger’s cognition. Rieger worked with the help of her assistant, Tair Almor, the two dealt with immense technical and physical challenges. The mythological statue Rieger has created is full of curves inviting the observer to do more than observe and also touch the objects. The project revolves around beauty, jealousy, temptation, punishment, witchcraft and fear. Moreover, it deals with an image which has been discussed thoroughly in western art, but gives it a different spin- the face is not what we focus on but rather the snakes replacing Medusa’s hair. The human portrait with its mythology and its loaded contexts are embedded in the pieces subconscious, behind the scenes, in the collective recollection of the observers. The visual focus is on nature, the limbs simulate a living organism attractive and intimidating at the same time.

The project can be seen at “HaLounge” Group Exhibition, at Neve Schecter Space in Tel Aviv.

“The tribal fire formed a center for social cohesion, sitting around the fire in ancient times cemented relationships within the tribe and strengthened tribal identity.
Tribal experience is vivid within our sub-conscience and tradition, it awakens a longing for the “supportive collective”.

The project is comprised of classic broomstick heads made of twigs and branches, put together in the shape of a nest-like circle. Upon it lay delicate thin porcelain eggs. The eggs are lit up from within. Benches are placed, to invite spectators to sit together around the “fire”. The project brings different people together around a common, primal memory, bringing joy and excitement to the spectators.

The thin eggs are made of porcelain, a strong yet seemingly breakable material, which spreads the light with its magnificent white glow. Each egg has hand-made engravings on it, each and every one a unique work of art. Although their general shape and size are identical, the different engravings spread the beams of light differently, thus demonstrating each egg’s uniqueness. The project relates the beauty of diversity, the fact that we each come with our own baggage, yet we can still come together in a feeling of togetherness, like the different eggs in their nest an allegory to our community.

This project was exhibited in Tel Aviv Biennale of Craft and Design 2020, Tel Aviv.

This project begins with the origin of the ceramic as creative material with which one can relate to systems of life and evolution, to gender and to artistic identity.
COCOON is crafted as open and sealed vessels, merging symbolic transformations and bodily configurations, in forms that allude both to female and male human anatomies and animalistic phenomena.

Rieger also relates to the mythical concept of the “GOLEM” (Hebrew for cocoon), a man-like-creature made of lifeless, earth-like, material whose creator gives it life and it subsequently turns on its creator. In parallel, she discusses the essence and meaning of creation and its significance in the ceramic “language” and its images.
COCOON has evolved from her previous oeuvre, representing the artist’s interest in sculpting the temporary stage of “caged” lives before breaking into the world.
Rieger finds the beautiful shape of the cocoon magical, both in texture, form and colour suggesting dynamic movement and fluidity.

This project was exhibited in “Collect International Art Fair” Solo Booth, Saatchi Gallery, London, “RAW” Solo Exhibition, Artspace Tel Aviv, Fresh Paint Art Fair 2019, Solo Booth, Tel Aviv and in Tel Aviv Biennale of Craft and Design 2020, Tel Aviv.

Alongside my practice as a ceramic artist, I have been working and producing functional art works.
In these objects I strive to balance seemingly contrasting elements in a harmonious way. I throw heavily grogged stoneware clay on the wheel, in order to achieve a primary, rough feel to the objects, I then add to those pieces a touch of delicate gold or porcelain.
The inspiration to these pieces comes from different experiences – travelling to distant countries (seeing the rice growing terraces in South Korea, working with local artists and artisans in Jingdezhen, China, admiring the ceramic facades on buildings in my native Brazil), experiencing the ambivalence of being a mother to three Israeli soldiers and growing up with a multi-cultural identity.
I aim to apply moments of magic and inspiration, into vessels we encounter on our everyday routine, checking new frontiers of balance and harmony.

In 2011, Martha Rieger arrived for the first time in the city of Jingdezhen, the centuries-old center of China’s traditional pottery crafts. Later on, as the only woman among teams of male experts and technicians, practicing hundreds of years of knowledge and experience, Rieger started working on a first large-scale project of eggs, freely adorned with ready-made traditional Chinese decorations in blue and white. The sculptures that resulted in the “Blue & White – Made in China” project, are much larger than the original size of chicken eggs, turned into human scale, due to their physical dominance and personal hand-touch given by the artist. In contrast to the Fabergé eggs, which are covered with gold and precious stones, Rieger’s sculptures reference a long tradition of Blue and White decor – common in Chinese ceramics, but also in Brazilian tiles (Rieger’s country of birth), and in the national flag and patriotic aesthetics of Israel (Rieger’s homeland for most of her life). The eggs’ sculptural presence calls for a tactile touch, as they manifest vulnerability and a gentle approach, in a world filled with violence and aggression. It’s as if Rieger’s sculptures call us to slow down, to embrace and protect the fragility yet “courage” of these quiet, “potential” creatures. If the egg symbolizes a closed world of pre-creation, a moment before birth is given, the sculptures might suddenly resemble delicate babies in the company of the grown-ups, requiring careful attention.

Pieces of this project were awarded the Judge award prize in Mino Ceramic Festival, Japan, 2014.

In 2014, following the success of her first project in Jingdezhen – “Blue & White – Made in China”, Martha Rieger created a second group of sculptures, under the title “Columbus’ Egg” – an homage to a legendary story connecting the travels and discoveries of Christopher Columbus with the humoristic and apparently simple challenge of balancing an egg on its one end. The myth, which demonstrates the value of creative thinking, intersects with the geographical, material and emotional journeys which are at the heart of Rieger’s work.
The egg sculptures in this body of work are characterized mostly by vegetation patterns, hand-painted on all sides of the egg sculptures, creating an artificial landscape that merges the “natural” – eggs and greenery – and the artificial – the work of art.

Both motifs of the egg and the garden are loaded with autobiographical aspects of memory and sub consciousness, fantasy and reality. Rieger creates an underlying trail between her life in Brazil and Israel and the porcelain’s journey from East to West; beginning with her mother’s plant nursery in Rio de Janeiro and the city’s decorated pavements, continuing with the traditional models of the Far East and ending with local motifs of the Middle East – palm trees and watermelon fields, mesmerizing by their initial beauty, but gradually seem to be more like warheads or bombshells.

This project was exhibited in Inga Gallery of Contemporary Art, Tel Aviv, Israel, Fresh Paint Art Fair 2016, Tel Aviv and in ״Post Post-modernism ≠ Utopia”, Haifa Museum of Art, 2016, Haifa.

The installation “Drought” has conceptually emerged from the ceramic shards spread all over Jingdezhen, a given situation that also inspired the “Gilded Cages” project. In opposite to the blue and white ready-made ceramic shards that are typical to the Chinese ceramics, here Rieger uses deliberately fragmented hand-made porcelain pieces in white, to create an abstract landscape of a forgotten, dry land.

The monochromatic installation, that lays on the floor of the gallery, also climbs on one of its walls, as if not willing to “surrender” to the laws of nature. It reminds a desert land, but also of a living creature that constantly evolves and changes, as the shards are not laying flat on the floor, but have a sense of movement to them. As the landscape depicted in “Drought” has no specificity about its geographical location, and it is “colorless”, it calls the spectator to wonder about its political and social interpretations, and invites the viewer to take part in the artistic creation which refuses any definite borders.

This piece was exhibited in Inga Gallery of Contemporary Art in 2016 and in “White on White” Group Exhibition 2016, Mane Katz Museum, Haifa.

Evolving from her previous bodies of work that researched the shape of the egg, Martha Rieger created her Gilded Cages project in the city of Jingdezhen, which has been China’s most established center for ceramic crafts for centuries. While moving through the city, it was impossible for Rieger not to notice the piles of damaged or unwanted blue and white ceramic shards, strewn about throughout the public sphere; in the streets, in parks, and on roundabouts.

By placing the ready-made shards in gilded iron cages shaped as eggs, Rieger showcases their previous potential of being complete. The shape of the egg, symbolizing pre-birth, is holding these broken fragments, as if protecting them from being jettisoned into the streets again. Combining the beginning and the end, and genesis and the destruction, the gilded cages frame together the beauty of the imperfect and the leftover.

This project was exhibited in
Inga Gallery of Contemporary Art in 2016
Art Space 2020, Unreliable Narrator
“Feminine Difference” Haifa Museum of Art, September 2020

In 2016, Martha Rieger created sculptures, shaped as a bubble meeting a horizontal surface, in that fragile moment before snapping. Adventurously crafted by using traditional Chinese techniques and contemporary innovations, the bubble sculptures are hand-painted by Rieger in the Japanese Shibori style, known in its western versions of Tie-Dye or Batik. By using sponges, fishing nets and duct tape, Rieger created an overall illusionistic pattern, transforming each bubble into a world of its own.

Under Rieger’s hands, the intangible short-living bubble, a perfect existence that suddenly breaks, is transformed into an entire universe that lures the viewer to its frozen beauty, encapsulating a potential of longevity, movement and the ability to grasp an existence that seemed impossible.

This project was exhibited in Trumpeldor Gallery Art Center, Ben Gurion University of the Negev, and sold out in Fresh Paint Art Fair in 2018.
The manufacturing of the sculptures was a collaboration between Rieger and He Yongjun Lio and Wei Tong’s workshop in Jingdezhen, China.