Hans Meeuwsen - 2026-96 Kubus ?

This artwork is part of a series in which the artist investigates the deformation of porcelain during the firing process. The originally straight strips of the cube have been deformed by the heat of the firing process, and the original cube shape is severely distorted, creating a Jugendstil-like linear pattern. Notably, the deformation is entirely symmetric.

The artwork is made of porcelain, oxidizing-fired at 1240 C. The wall thickness is about one millimeter, resulting in some transparency in the porcelain. The work is partially glazed with a transparent glaze.

The work is signed with two applications, the first bearing the given name and the first letter of the surname, and the second bearing the Japanese characters Raku and Yakimono.

Hans Meeuwsen (1954, The Netherlands) graduated from the Visual Arts Academy in Tilburg to initially become a teacher in visual arts at an upper secondary school. His main specialty was drawing, but he accidentally discovered the potential of clay as a visual arts medium. Rolling, pressing and cutting provided him with small flat clay squares that he used to build cubic shapes looking like hermetically closed cells.

A few years later he received national and international recognition with exhibitions in The Netherlands and Germany. Important works from that time include towers, pyramids and other constructions, some being pure geometric abstractions, others being interpretations of the mythical Tower of Babel. Hans further developed his ceramic skills during residencies at the European Ceramic Work Centre in The Netherlands and working periods in New Zealand, Lithuania and the Japanese island Hirado.

During the most recent years he has further developed his ceramic skills and works with creamy white wafer-thin slices of porcelain that are mounted into cubes or pyramids. By stacking these geometric shapes in repetitive patterns he creates sculptures that are reminiscent of the Dutch Zero movement and, in particular, the works by Jan Schoonhoven, but ultimately clearly bear the artist’s own signature. He applies his decades-long experience to create a dialogue between inner and outer space, between geometric and organic, between order and chaos.

Hans Meeuwsen is a “Prix de Rome” nominee of 1987 and a Fletcher Challenge Ceramic merit award winner of 1992, and ever since then his work has found its way to many national and international collections.