Here comes the queen! (actually, it was "only' the crown princess...)

Saturday was busy with the conference opening parties. There are two major exhibitions, each European country is represented by two emerging and two established artists. During the afternoon we were bused to the Helligdomsklipperne Art Museum (what a beautiful building!) and after that to the "Young Talents" show in Hasle. With the crown princess in attendance (smiles, handshakes, speeches, photographs taken) for the opening, every one of us tried to do our best in terms of formal attire. This resulted in a motley crew of jeans, clay stains, un-ironed shirts and dresses complete with studio shoes and napsacks.

These pan-continental survey shows are always suspicious, there is a variety of work and very little thematic coherence in the show. Although I found many favorites most of the work was unthrilling but not entirely uninteresting. As far as the technical goes, all were very accomplished. What I enjoyed the most was seeing the differences from country to country and recognizing the dependence on the historic context and cultural heritage that lead to these. For example, artists from former Eastern-European countries tend to have less resources in terms of production. A studio artist often times works on small scale with uncomplicated forms, where the presence of the hand is obvious. The clay is in its most natural form. On the opposite end of the spectrum, there is some bold, almost architectural computer aided design work coming out of the Netherlands, while the UK was represented by a young artist, Katherine Morling's lovely figurative work. The jury award went to a Spanish artist, Rafael Perez, whose amazing abstract forms were laden with color and texture.
While the mature artist's show was much less the expected, the young talent show was unfortunate. Work is badly displayed and jumbled together in no particular order or organization. Here again, the work may be technically spotless (a good cast, no glaze faults, etc.) but, for the most part, too formal, too much trying to fit in with the so called "rules" of the medium, uninspired and conceptually underdeveloped. Interestingly, and differently from the other exhibition, here it was impossible to discover regional differences: transformer figurines recast in clay by a spanish artist and a latvian artist alike, vessels of a japanese tradition mixed with those of the bauhaus tradition.
A dinner party followed the exhibition openings, giving a chance to mix and mingle. (Let me not go into the details of the menu: There were lots of boiled meat and potatoes and, for vegetarians like me, grudgingly given mashed potatoes for change. An all time record in bad food!)
On the other hand, I met a lot of great people, interesting artists, managed to compare notes about educational and art systems particular to many geographic areas, and most importantly had great fun. Unlike any other conferences or events like this I've been to in the past, here everybody made a special effort to get to know everybody else. There was nothing easier than to go up to someone and say, "where are you from and what is it like?" or "I'm really interested in your work, let's chat" and lots of chatting we did. With everybody,... except for the Hungarians. Which made me remember why I'm no longer sad to have left my country of birth. Being small and without much economic resources or professional opportunities is a thing that could be accepted and overcome. But for some reason my fellow countryman artists reside in a constant state of denial, negativism, and a smug "we know it better" attitude.

This post should have extended to some thoughts on the art vs. craft divide in the light of the conference events but I'll pass this time and return to my studio. Hopefully, what happens there makes more sense on this topic than the words I could come up with.