Benedikt Wiertz: Até Falhar a Terra: Curated by Flaviana Lasan

With fire as a co-author, the works are stripped of their original function, as seen in the subtle asymmetries of the thrown piece, the individual character of the engobe applied with the fingers, and the atmospheric marks left by flame and smoke. The sculptures disobey! And that is the mastery. They break, bend back, melt; they disappear into themselves, creating abstract layers that challenge our understanding of what these ancestral elements, earth, fire, and human, can achieve. 

Across so many arrangements of temperatures and influence, the accumulation of heat shrinks matter and expands our understanding of how the body, too, emits and accumulates heat. It passes from one to the other, from matter to body, from body to matter, and in this way we narrow the distance between what is human in the earth and what is earth in the human. Without control over the infinity of existences and ways of feeling, Benedikt's works call for proximity, as do all things handmade and creative, prompting our thoughts to work harder. Every gaze upon each sculpture is renewed by the space in which it stands, the light that falls upon it, and even the sound that surrounds our imagination. To invite observation is one of the kindest acts of our generation, of our time. 

So many years of practice give Wiertz's work a singular density. In each sculpture lies the precision of a deeply mature technique and the experience of a material observed over decades through its temperatures, resistances, and deviations. At a moment of growing recognition of ceramics within contemporary art, this trajectory acquires a particular presence and widens the ways in which the language itself can be read. To move through this body of work is to perceive the continued relevance of a practice that continues to open paths for sculptural ceramics. It is within this interval between experience and discovery that this body of work offers itself to the gaze.

— Flaviana Lasan, 2026