Edmund De Waal

The exhibition title derives from Paul Celan's 1967 poetry collection Atemwende ('breathturn'), a term that the poet equates with the moment when words transcend literal meaning. The pots possess their own evocative power, appearing as characters that touch and huddle, or face isolation. Each of the four large vitrines, 'breathturn I-IV' (all works 2013), holds hundreds of pots, while individual objects and smaller clusters sit within wall-mounted boxes, girders, and brackets ('black field I-III and I am their music'), evoking the ascetic constructions of Donald Judd and Giorgio Morandi's communities of everyday vessels on canvas. By setting intimate handmade works in fabricated aluminum vitrines, de Waal produces a formal tension between tradition and innovation.