Mårten Medbo — Homo Capax — Institut suédois — Exhibition — Slash Paris

Past: February 15 → April 7, 2013

“Some say my work is scary, disgusting, even nightmarish. Others consider it beautiful. I like to show the unexpected to provoke astonishment and amazement, and to bring out the inner child that sleeps within each and every one of us.”

Mårten Medbo

The work of Mårten Medbo, one of the main contemporary Swedish ceramicists, continues to blur the lines between art, design and craft. His approach to glass and ceramics is unconventional, playing with the materials’ surface to surprizing effect. Since 2010, he has been working on a PhD thesis about arts and crafts as a contemporary mode of expression, not just in juxtaposition to industrialism or as a technique linked to practical objects. It is this approach that has given way to the installation and name of the exhibition, Homo Capax; as expressed by the French philosopher Paul Ricœur, signifying mans’ responsibility for his own actions. These words illustrate the contradictory feelings that have persistently influenced Mårten’s notion of crafts, while also questioning society’s outlook on both its consumption of industrially produced objects as well as the value given to applied knowledge.