Sebastian Stöhrer

If there’ s an artist whose oeuvre merits the title “ creation,” it is Sebastian Stö hrer. Shaping clay— essentially, soil— he molds his “ denizens” : colorful and friendly-looking sculptural beings, some of them enhanced with sticks or branches reminiscent of limbs. Despite their air of levity and humor, they are not the products of mere momentary inspiration or a whim. It takes decades of dedicated experimentation with the kiln based on the millennia-old art of ceramics as well as expert knowledge of chemistry and physics to create such colors and shapes. Stö hrer has been called an alchemist, and indeed he has made it his mission to vindicate this researcher’ s craft, an ancestor of the natural sciences. Alchemy, like Stö hrer’ s oeuvre, combines pure rationality with coincidence and a scintilla of magic. The artist plays an intuitive and sensual game with his clay and the virtually incalculable chromaticity of the glazes— chaos, anarchy, and irrepressible urges being an integral dimension of all creation. In Stö hrer’ s “ denizens,” we encounter the embodiments of that creation: likenesses of ourselves and perhaps also heralds of a future more good-natured version.