Born in Leopoldsburg (Belgium) in 1940, Piet Stockmans this year celebrates the 30th anniversary of his studio. Living on the site of Genk’s C-Mine, his career fluctuates between art, the applied arts and industrial design. For nearly 30 years, he taught product design at KHLim in Genk and the Design Academy Eindhoven, and collaborated with industry – notably 25 years with Royal Mosa. New ideas and experiments continue to nourish his work as an artist-ceramicist, ranging from unique or multiple pieces of applied art, to integrations of his porcelain works, to architecture. Cultural ambassador for Flanders in 1995, winner of the Henry Van de Velde Career Award (Flanders Design) in 1998, his works have been included in major exhibitions (solo or group) and have been the subject of memorable installations. Stockmans has seen his creations take their place in the largest Belgian and international collections: PMMK Oostende, Designmuseum Gent, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, MAD New York, Met New York, Mint Museum of Craft and Design, Musée national / Cité de la Céramique
de Sèvres, V&A London, etc. He has also led many workshops and conferences in major art and design schools, and has participated in important biennials of ceramics. Spazio Nobile represents Stockmans since 2017. “Piet Stockmans has view of the matter in his wall installation and “Example of A Landscape” on view at the gallery. He has conducted his whole career at the edge. Among his most recognizable compositions feature numerous porcelain vessels and imperfect fragments, the lips of each marked out in a wash of blue, so called “Stockmansblauw”. Despite their outward serenity, these installations can also be understood as energy fields, welling up against their own limits. The individual variations of each painterly edge suggest a barely controlled tide, a brimming chaos beneath. Over the course of his six decades in the medium, Stockmans has pursued the collision between order and turbulence, strength and fragility, following that dialectical instinct wherever it leads him. In his hands, ceramic seems not so much a terrestrial art form as an oceanic or celestial one: a domain of infinite amplitude, containing forces beyond our reckoning.” Extract by Glenn Adamson for TLmag, 2020.
Piet Stockmans: Extreme Measures
Piet Stockmans: Porcelain Reincarnation
Contemplating Land/Scapes with Piet Stockmans
Piet Stockmans Takes His Blues to Collect
Studio Pieter Stockmans: Quality, Craftsmanship and Love
Blauw. Ceci n’est pas une couleur
Stockmans Meets Vercruysse at Spazio Nobile
