Vernissage 1 May 2008

Lise Damsager feels that the theme crockery – plates, dishes, basins etc. - is an exciting field as objects embrace both sculptural and decorative aspects as well as having the possibility of being  pieces of furniture or table surfaces -  concurrently with their functional aim.  Crockery -  surfaces with a hollow - can be used either as aesthetic decoration together with other furniture and furnishing, or as objects which the observer can interact with by supplementing with various and varying items – fruits, nuts, plants, flowers etc. Thus, crockery has a clearly expressed functional objective, accomplished nevertheless through sculptural and artistic expression.

The foundation for Lise Damsager's work is her love of form, texture and material.  She  feels that her products should  tempt us to use our fingertips to explore their form -  thus the shapes and surfaces are transposed into an intensified visual experience. 

The items on display in Dansk Svenska Kompaniets exhibition are mainly made of concrete and wood. Concrete is a man-made, hard, stony material that provides a delightful contrast to the softer, warmer wood. As an industrial material, concrete has often been scoffed at and looked upon as  being and almost unhealthy. For these reasons Lise Damsager finds excitement in challenging the very nature of the material to create objects of great aesthetic value and  artistic quality.

Lise Damsager was educated at Köpenhamns konstskola för skulptur och grafik (The Copenhagen College of Sculpture and Graphics) and Danmarks Designskole (The Danish College of Design) in Copenhagen, thereafter spending  time with the ceramics artist  Koichi Mizuno in Oroshi, Japan and the artist  Frank Boyden in Cascade Head, Oregon, USA.

In recent years Lise Damsager has taken part in a number of different kinds of exhibition  both in Europe and the USA and is represented at: The Ichon World Ceramic Center -  Kyonggi Province -  Korea; Musée Magnelli, Musée dela Céramique in Vallauris – France; Danmarks Designskole – Institutet för Produktdesign in Copenhagen and other prestigious centres of Art and Design.

The Lise Damsager exhibition at Dansk Svenska Kompaniet runs from 1 May to 15 June concurrently with that of Anders Wiklund's watercolours.