works
bio
works
bio
Ann Van Hoey was born in Mechelen, Belgium in 1956.
After graduating with the Master in Applied Economic Sciences at the University of Antwerp, she trained as a potter at the Institute for Arts and Craft in her hometown, Mechelen. There she started her own workshop in 2006 and since then her work has been rewarded with many international prizes and is represented in the permanent collections of the Museum of Arts and Design (MAD), New York; Royal Museum of Art and History (KMKG), Brussels; Musée Ariana, Geneva; and the Museo Internazionale delle Ceramiche, Faenza , among others.
Ann Van Hoey takes basic spatial forms as her starting point. Enchanted by the geometrical design of Japanese zen gardens of stones and inspired by the Japanese art of origami, she developed the technique of folding thin sheets of clay.
In fact, she cuts to recompose. The geometric placing of the incisions dictates the guiding outlines of the resulting reshape of the perfect simplicity of the hemisphere, thus suggesting a growing tension between the restructured object and the perception of spatial capacity, steeped in the interplay between its paper-thin delicacy and the crude aesthetics of the raw earth. And while the cuts are straight, they are warped, bending and curving, to the convexity of the bowl.
The result is a deliberately minimalistic demonstration of purity, form, sobriety, efficiency and clarity of line, a paragon of geometric and mathematical relentlessness, from which the power of the basic material, clay, radiates.
Clay as colour, because clay ís colour.
Building upon the shapely language that she uses while crafting her bowls, Ann now also creates closed volumes. These come in a totally different raw material, very much contrasting with the light and fragile nature of her ceramics. This time she chose a heavy and unbreakable substance: bronze.