Sasha Koozel Reibstein

Working with the ceramic material is in itself deeply meaningful as it offers direct engagement with the physicality of the earth. Each object experiences a significant metamorphosis through labored and precarious construction followed by numerous firings with rapid rates of expansion and contraction involving weighty and explosive glazes. My drips are sculpted with extreme control, while glaze is applied in thick and uneven layers, allowing the materials to inject their own intrinsic response to the processes. This allows my relationship to the material be one of collaboration, where I see just how far I can push the material before it collapses, serving as a direct metaphor for our own minds and bodies which eventually fracture and give way under extreme stress.

 

Surfaces are often coated in precious metals such as gold and platinum, materials that are naturally occurring both on earth and in space. This luminous and reflective surface is often paired with black flock or textural glazes, creating tension between the reflection and absorption of light. There is a dissonance between these surfaces, highlighting the tension and difficulty inherent in balancing lives full of love and loss, health and illness, control and powerlessness.

 

References to the cosmos additionally address experiences of otherness and offer an embrace of escapism, allowing the opportunity to be transported and envision a present and future outside of one’s overwhelming earthly existence. Recently this has been focused on the idea of the portal, a visualization of a point of transformation that once you pass through, you cannot return the same.