Uwe Karlsen

“In the malleable state, porcelain is a very sensuous material, though one that handles very capriciously, a material that demands your undivided attention, presupposes a willingness to accept failure, and is most intensely graced with purity, density and preciousness.”

Uwe Karlsen was born at Essen in 1954. He studied Industrial Design at Kiel and long worked as a freelance industrial designer in Hamburg. Meanwhile he was busy putting together what is now a comprehensive sculptural œuvre, embracing items in either stoneware or porcelain as well as some in bronze that invariably have their origins in a rational initial form and which have appeared in a great many exhibitions, most recently at the Lucerne Art Museum and the Wilhelm Lehmbruck Museum in Duisburg. Uwe Karlsen lives and works near Lucerne in Switzerland and in Cologne.