Caroline Slotte

Caroline Slotte (b. 1975, Helsinki, Finland) carves antique plates and secondhand china tableware, subtracting matter to render intricate, sandblasted lines and ghostly tracings. Her delicate yet densely-layered carvings interrupt the material coherence of these common objects, revealing moments of absence, ambiguity, and blankness. These acts of redaction underscore the curious nature of mass-produced decorative objects; by taking away layers of glaze and clay, Slotte draws our attention to their stylized forms and materiality, as in Delftware ceramics with their familiar yet distant landscapes. Each of her scenes, as though carved by erosion, becomes a uniquely altered variation on the theme. In doing so, her artworks broaden our attention to address questions of cultural association, material memory, and the inevitable losses and transformations of time.

Slotte is a member of the Arabia Art Department Society in Helsinki, Finland, where she maintains a studio. She has exhibited widely in exhibitions at the Everson Museum, the Espoo Museum of Modern Art, the XXII Triennale di Milano, and the Cheongju International Craft Biennale in South Korea. Her work is included in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, the Victoria & Albert Museum, London, and the Museum of Decorative Arts in Oslo. She graduated from the department of ceramics and glass at Designskolen Kolding in 1998 and received an MA and PhD in ceramic art from the Bergen Academy of Art and Design.