Imaginarium: Ronit Baranga: Remarks & Reviews

"I took the simple utensil -the utensil we take for granted, the passive utensil- and I gave it the limbs with which we use it. So, now the utensil is in a different place. It is active. It can decide whether to use itself, whether to allow me to use it, or whether to run away." The ceramicist, 2016

"Viewers on my work almost instantly react: they are either enthusiastic or appalled , but never indifferent. I hope that their harsh physical reaction stimulates them to think about the ideas and content that's derived from my art" (Dirge Magazine),

Statements

The Blurred Border Between the Living and the Still. In the following series of works, I sculpted human mouths and fingers emerging from tableware. The blurred border between the living and the still in these works is intriguing. It makes you think. In this combination of the still and the alive joined as one, I try to change the way in which we observe useful tableware. The useful, passive, tableware can now be perceived as an active object, aware of itself and its surroundings - responding to it. It does not allow to be taken for granted, to be used. It decides on its own how to behave in the situation. This is how I prefer to think about my plates and cups.

Crowd, 2010. Unlike the active pieces on fingers, that can move freely and decide whether to participate in the layout in which they were set, my mouth pieces are static. Despite the mouths ability, in the eyes of the viewer, to open and close, bite, swallow, smile, speak, scream or remain silent, they are in fact passive. This passiveness is very threatening. Mass of vases and bowls, open and closed, each with a human mouth, a connectionless crows. This is a crowd of unrelated individuals.

Self Feeding, 2010. Part of twelve plates; some with hands holding forks, some with an open mouth. The plates are placed in an interacting fashion, in which some are feeding the others or preventing other plates from being fed.

The use of fingers and mouths in my work is full of intent and meaning. The fingers and the mouth are very sensual organs in the human body and are therefore very powerful as separated items from it. The “seamless” combination of these organs in plates or cups, appearing as one, creates, in my opinion, new items that “feel” their environment and respond to it. The main idea of these series of works is that the useful, passive plate or cup becomes active due to this transformation and can decide on its own how to behave in the situation it is in: whether to allow others to use it, whether to use itself or maybe even escape (Interview by Empty Kingdom, 8.7.2011).

La Céramiste israélienne Ronit Baranga réalise des sculptures pour le moins troublantes. Des doigts d’argile, très réalistes, émergent des assiettes où des bouches se cachent à l’intérieur. Les doigts et les lèvres semblent prêts à agir. La bouche est un élément intéressant pour la vaisselle en céramique puisqu’elle est également son objectif principal, au moins de façon classique, qui est d’amener la nourriture et la boisson jusqu’à elle. «J’ai choisi de traiter avec la « bouche » comme une connotation métaphorique d’un poste-frontière », a déclaré Baranga. «Une frontière entre le corps intérieur et le milieu extérieur qui l’entoure » (Chambre 237).

El uso de los dedos y la boca en mi trabajo está lleno de intención y significado. Los dedos y la boca son órganos muy sensuales del cuerpo humano y, por tanto, muy potentes, como elementos separados de ella. La “perfecta” la combinación de estos órganos en platos o tazas, donde aparecien como una sola unidad, crean en mi opinión, los nuevos elementos que hacen “sentir” y responder a ella (Escultura, Trianarts, 25.2.2013).

I would like that anyone who sees my work feels something – what they feel is not relevant to me, as long as they feel. I hope that the emerging feelings will cause the viewers to think about the ideas behind my work… The combination of ceramic cups with ceramic fingers represent an idea in which the still creates a will of its own, enabling a cup to decide whether to stay or leave the situation it is in (Cultura colectiva, 14.7.2014).

Embraced, 2016-2017. In this series, the relationship between the "doubtfully alive" vessels becomes physical. They lean on each other, pinching, hugging, embracing and their porcelain bodies react.

Reviews

The sculptures of Israeli ceramicist Ronit Baranga flirt with the boundary between desire and repulsion. Baranga sculpts delicate lips and sensual fingertips, planting these tools of seduction in places where we least expect to find them. Plates and bowls grow mouths ready to lick and kiss. Caressing hands multiply until they turn into mutant, plant-like growths. These sensual features begin to seem invasive and frightening when stripped of their humanity and presented as inanimate objects (Nastia Voynovskaya, Chill-Inducing Ceramic Sculptures, Hi-Fructose, 2.4.2013).

Las esculturas del ceramista israelí Ronit Baranga coquetean con el límite entre el deseo y la repulsión, Baranga esculpe labios delicados y sensuales puntas de los dedos los cuales se inspiran en las herramientas que estos son para la seducción en los lugares donde menos esperan encontrarlos. Platos y tazones y otras forman son las que ven crecer bocas listas para lamer y besar. Estas características sensuales empiezan a parecer invasoras y aterradoras cuando se despojadan de su humanidad y se presentan como objetos inanimados (Urban, Esculturas que lamen, besan y tocan, The City Loves You, 2.4.2013)

Ronit Baranga actualmente es una de las artistas plásticas que más ha sorprendido por su habilidad en esculpir cerámica. Su creatividad ha cuestionado los límites de la belleza desde la provocación. Sus piezas son una muestra de que no todo está hecho y visto en el mundo del arte. [… Sus] obras [son] perturbadoras [y] provocan en el espectador una sensación de incomodidad. Su trabajo es un vivo reflejo de que la materia puede llegar a desafiar los límites entre lo estético y lo congruente. […] Las vasijas de Baranga son un desafío que cuestiona la forma y los significados; es la muestra de que cualquier obra que provoque algún sentimiento o sensación, incluso de repulsión, está en el cumplimiento de una finalidad estética (Pamela Muñoz, Entre lo perturbador y lo bello, Cultura colectiva, 14.7.2014).

Ronit Baranga […] ha dedicado la mayor parte de su vida a trabajar con la arcilla, creando esculturas que desafían los límites de lo estético y lo congruente, muchas veces dando como resultado un sentimiento de incomodidad en el espectador. En casi todas sus obras Ronit añade dedos y distintas partes del cuerpo fundidas a objetos comunes, los finos detalles en las manos y dedos logran evocar vida a sus obras. El uso de bocas y dedos esta lleno de significado, ya que estas partes del cuerpo son muy sensuales, por lo tanto, muy potentes como elementos en sus obras. […] No cabe duda que el trabajo de Ronit despierta un sentimiento al verle, a veces positivo y quizás otras no tanto, pero al final podemos observar que el objeto y el órgano se encuentran en perfecta comunión, siendo una obra llena de vida y en total armonía (Andrea Monterde, Esculturas surreales, Inkult Magazine, 2014).

Israeli ceramicist Ronit Baranga‘s “body of work” is unsettling, to say the least. Sculpted from clay, realistic fingers emerge from plates while mouths lurk inside cups. The gnarled fingers and lips seem poised for action. We would most certainly hesitate before using any of these for fear of being bitten.
The mouth is an interesting element for ceramic tableware as its main purpose, at least conventionally, has been to carry food and drink until it reaches the mouth. “I chose to deal with ‘mouth’ as a metaphoric connotation to a border gate,” said Baranga in an interview [in 2014]. “A border between the inner body and the external environment surrounding it.” (Johnny Strategy, Unsettling Ceramic Tableware by Ronit Baranga Incorporates Realistic Mouths and Fingers, Colossal, 28.1.2015).

Baranga […] consigue acertar en […] nuestras reacciones más atávicas ante nuestra propia animalidad manifiesta, ante la expresión de nuestra propia anatomía y el significado de las diferentes partes de nuestro cuerpo. [… Su] serie titulada lúdicamente "cuerpo de trabajo" es, como mínimo, inquietante. […] "Elegí hacer frente a "la boca" como una connotación metafórica a una puerta de la frontera", comentaba Baranga en una entrevista [en 2014]. "Una frontera entre el cuerpo interior y el ambiente externo que lo rodea". […] Los cuencos con una boca al fondo están rellenados de resina sintética transparente para sugerir la presencia del líquido que vehiculiza los microorganismos que lo habitan y que instintivamente rechazamos. Por si no fuera suficientemente evidente, Baranga coloca estratégicamente pequeñas burbujas para sobreactuar la sugerencia de vida en las inquietantes bocas (Mafa Alborés, Arte y percepción, El animal invisible, 3.2.2015).

Though the clay works of Ronit Baranga […] have been described as chill-inducing, frightening, and even repulsive, the […] artist doesn’t see her work this way. Her sculptures animate every day objects such as dishes, tea cups, and saucers, offering them the ability to express the full spectrum of human emotions. […] Baranga’s newer works also express an undercurrent of pain, violence, joy, and tranquility (Caro, Objects into Life, Hi-Fructose Magazine, 9.3.2016).

"Ronit Baranga‘s sculptures animate every day objects such as dishes, tea cups, and saucers, offering them the ability to express the full spectrum of human emotions. Even her humanoid figures sprout new body parts as if their skin has a mind of its own. Baranga’s works express an undercurrent of pain, violence, joy, and tranquility" (Ariadna Zierold, Animated Objects, 19.3.2016).

Isn't the Grotesque supposed to impress you?

"The most common definition of grotesque is «scary and funny united». […] These pieces might evrn shake your way of thinking or perceiving. [… It depends on how open-minded you are. […] Ronit Baranga['s …] clay sculptures […] may haunt you in your dreams or make you revalue your aesthetic principles. […] Baranga can serve you a cup of tea [… including ceramic] parts of human anatomy such as fingers and mouth. […] There are demons that can be very hard to capture. Those are usually [the] ones we fear the most--our own flaws. Ronit Baranga, evidently, knows this and she is not fighting. She is playing with [them all]." --Marija Krsmanovic, "Clay Obscure: Grotesque Sculptures [to Fight Demons]," Whizual, March 2016.

Baranga has created an anthropomorphic tea set that looks, to the casual observer like something that might take place in the cupboards after Beauty and the Beast fall asleep. Human fingers and orifices sprout from the floral print tea pot and cups and they grasp at one another with enough vigor to completely warp each other's pale bodies. The kitchenware oozes passion, and it's impossible to look at the smaller tea cup's parted lips without imagining a moan—or perhaps a scream.
The sculpture's title, Embrace #1, is an accurate, if understated, description of the rendezvous Baranga has captured. When we ask just what was going on in the new work […], she responds, "I leave this to the interpretation of the viewers." It seems unlikely that the three fleshy reservoirs rubbing up against one another is a platonic encounter […]. We concede that the scene could simply show the lead up to or come down from the ménage à trois—admittedly, we don't know enough about teapot's anatomy to confirm or deny this theory. Ronit Baranga leaves 'Embrace #1' up for interpretation, but the sculpture is very sensual.
Elaborating on her inspiration for Embrace #1, Baranga tells [… that] "all of these series deal with interactions. The last series—the most physical so far" (Beckett Mufson, Are These Anthropomotphic Ceramics having a Threesome?, Vice, 6.8.2016).

Israeli sculptress Ronit Baranga creates wonderfully unsettling clay sculptures that exist in a liminal realm where determining what is alive and what is inanimate is a hazardous guess at best. For series such as The Feast, Untitled Feast, and Breakfast, Baranga sculpted nimble human fingers and sensuously open mouths emerging from porcelain and ceramic tableware.
Self-aware and aware of its surroundings, Baranga’s surreal dishes and cups are active participants at mealtime. Sure, you’re hungry, but your plates are too. So dine with care or perhaps learn to share with your china, lest you lose a finger.
Sitting down to afternoon tea sounds like a perfectly cordial and mundane event until the teapot starts to wander off, your saucer refuses to let go of your biscuit, or your teacup tries to kiss you.
[…] With an educational background in psychology and literature, she uses her relentless drive to create with clay in order to explore both herself and human nature on a larger scale, the intimacy of relationships, or sometimes simply to seek out the humor in the grotesque (Malka Keuben, The Sentient Sculptures of Ronit Baranga, Dirge Magazine, 16.8.2016).

"The bodies depicted in Gross Anatomies dissipate, morph and decompose. They may have piecemeal forms, assembled from disparate parts. They openly engage in bodily functions like defecating, giving birth or dying, universal acts essential to human existence that usually take place in private. The creatures’ grotesque bodies may make us laugh or recoil in disgust. They can confuse us, appearing as two opposite-seeming things at the same time, such as cute and creepy or ugly yet beautiful.
The [artworks] on display in this exhibition feature grotesque representations of the human form. [… They] transgress social norms, amuse, titillate and befuddle us, and in some cases, gross us out.
In today’s parlance, “grotesque” describes things that are hideous or garish, but its dictionary definition is more nuanced: “of or unnatural in shape, appearance or character; fantastically ugly or absurd; bizarre.” Another meaning, “fantastic in the shaping and combination of forms, as in decorative work combining incongruous human and animal figures with scrolls and foliage,” has its historical root in the term Renaissance-era Italians applied to the imaginary figures featured in the decorative elements of unearthed Roman ruins: grottesca, meaning cave painting. This word evolved into grotesque, which encompasses all things hideous, fantastical and unnatural. Many of the bodies in Gross Anatomies exist in that same borderline category as the ancient Roman figures, comingling flora with male or female forms. These creatures are never fully human, and perhaps part animal, plant or machine.
Due to their in-between, misfit nature, grotesque images have a subversive power that threatens to overturn social conventions. Their strange, and often humorous, forms present opportunities for typically hidden or taboo subjects to surface, and suggest alternate realities where power structures have been toppled. Contemporary artists turn to grotesque themes to address issues related to inequity by creating parallel worlds in which hierarchies are dismantled and the downtrodden gain control. The works on display in Gross Anatomies depict bodies behaving outside accepted conventions of etiquette and science in ways that both disgust and delight" (Ohio, Akron Art Museum, Gross Anatomies, February-July 2017).

"One artwork featured in Gross Anatomies, a ceramic sculpture entitled Embraced #1, by Ronit Baranga, imbues an otherwise traditional-looking tea service with a ceramic human mouth and fingers to startling effect. This unsettling teapot seems prepared to pour and consume its own contents" ("Akron Art Museum presents the Weird, Incongrous and Grotesque with Gross Anatomies," Artdaily, 4 February 2017).

Theresa Bembnister said, “Due to their misfit nature, the images in this exhibition have a subversive power that questions, and sometimes even completely overturns, social conventions. These artists use grotesque themes to address issues of inequity by creating parallel worlds in which the status quo is dismantled and the downtrodden gain control. The works on display in Gross Anatomies depict bodies behaving outside accepted conventions of etiquette in ways that both disgust and delight” ("Akron Art Museum presents the Weird, Incongrous and Grotesque with Gross Anatomies," Artdaily, 4 February 2017).

[La beauté sera CONVULSIVE ou ne sera pas (André Breton, Nadja, 1928).]
Ronit Baranga (Israel, 1973) realizó estudios de Arte en la Escuela de Arte de Bet-Berl, sin embargo, ya contaba con tres licenciaturas, una en Literatura Hebrea, una más en Historia del Arte y otra en Psicología. Por lo que su codificación y entendimiento del arte es el resultado de procesos mentales estrechamente relacionados con sus estudios académicos.
La obra de Ronit es la representación de la figura humana, descontextualizada […]. A través de materiales como la arcilla, el esmalte, el vidrio e incluso la estampa, las muchas figuras (entre las que oscilan vasijas, jarrones, tazas, platos, teteras) tienen una proporción amorfa, en la que intervienen, de manera deliberada, formas de miembros humanos: bocas, dientes, […] dedos y manos.
Esta concepción del cuerpo como […] detalle, […] es […] recurrente [… en] la escultura de Baranga. […] Se trata de figuras sugestivas, provocadoras e incluso atrayentes.
[…] Por supuesto, la obra de Ronit alude a[l …] surrealismo. Sin embargo, sus representaciones van más allá de las experiencias oníricas. De hecho, sus figuras están inspiradas en la estética de lo grotesco, de lo siniestro, de lo que Freud consideraba una vivencia contradictoria, donde lo extraño se presenta como conocido y lo conocido se torna extraño.
Reconocemos las manos con familiaridad, sabemos que la figura representada es humana, sin embargo no podemos asegurar que esa metáfora sea totalmente una representación de lo humano, pues hay un elemento que no podemos definir.
La obra de Ronit Baranga siempre pone en incertidumbre a la intelectualidad, por lo que su apreciación es inquietante y seductora (Monserrat Ocampo, El molde de la belleza convulsiva, Apócrifa, México, 14.4.2017).

Artist Ronit Baranga creates ceramic sculptural works she describes as existing on the “border between living and still life”—objects guaranteed to either tickle your funny bone or haunt your worst nightmares, depending on your perspective. Baranga depicts dishware as sprouting human fingers and gaping mouths as the objects traipse across tabletops or physically cling to one another in a permanent embrace. The pieces are both silly and sinister as they come to life as if from a cartoon (Christopher Jobson, Artist Ronit Baranga’s Disturbing Anatomical Dishware Creeps Across Tabletops, Colossal, 6.7.2017).

Initiating a dialogue between people and inanimate objects, Barangas artwork can be read as an estraordinary sensual, sexual or as a verbal reference. It is incredibly interesting, bizarre, and unsettling. Fingertips and lips emerge from plates and the inside of teacups. They are very delicate and sensual but may leave you feeling pretty creeped out too.

¿QUERÉS MÁS? Ronit Baranga es una de las artistas más destacadas de hoy. Sentir e intención se encuentran bien balanceados en sus esculturas cerámicas, donde la técnica es además impecable. Los trabajos de Baranga constiuyen un desarrollo novedoso, original y sutil en el arte del siglo XXI. Su diálogo con lo Grotesco como categoría estética se halla tan bien calibrado que responde perfectamente a la noción que John Ruskin tenía acerca de "un buen grotesco", e incluso a la definición de Philip Thomson caracterizándolo en términos de "lo ambivalentemente anormal". Con todo, el logro de Baranga trasciende tamañas formulaciones teóricas. Mientras que sus entidades híbridas son sorprendentes, juguetonas e inquietantes, ellas transmiten a su vez algo que es humano, demasiado humano. Y ello se debe a que los grotescos objetos animados de Ronit Baranga son por sobre todas las cosas exquisitas manifestaciones del Deseo (Mariano Akerman, pintor e historiador del arte).

SOME MORE? Ronit Baranga is one of the most distinguished artists working today. Feeling and intention are well balanced in her ceramic sculptures, where the technique is also superb. Baranga's works are a new, original and subtle development in 21st-century art. Indeed, her dialogue with the Grotesque as an aestheic category is so well adjusted that fits John Ruskin's notion of "a fine grotesque," and so it does Philip Thomson's definition of the grotesque as "the ambivalently abnormal." Yet, Baranga's achievement goes beyond that. While the hybrid entities she produces are strange, playful and disquieting, they do also convey something that is human, too human. For Ronit Baranga's grotesquely animated objects are above all exquisite manifestations of human Desire (Mariano Akerman, painter and art historian).