This past summer in Barcelona, the city’s Design Museum presented Transgressions, a contemporary ceramics exhibition celebrating the exemplary transformations happening in the world of clay. Ceramics is the art of the four elements: earth, water, fire, and air. Artists working in this medium challenge themselves by exploring and altering any of these elements to reach new effects and share unique perspectives never before seen in ceramic art.

From Tradition to Innovation

There have always been progressive artists working with clay, but the current global trend of ceramicists pushing this traditional craft into the experimental realms of modern art is unprecedented. Barcelona’s Design Museum is keeping up with the movement by updating their existing ceramics collection of over a thousand artworks from 230 different artists, including Llorens, Artigas, Picasso, and Miró. The Transgressions exhibit added contemporary works from artists like Madola, María Oriza Perez, Xavier Toubes, Ángel Garraza, Nuria Torres, Sophie Aguilera Lester, Corrie Bain, Yukiko Kitahara, and Roger Coll. The curators sought out “creators who are not confining themselves to repeating processes and formulas, they’re contributing to new knowledge and experiences.”