One of the intriguing aspects about Marek Cecula is the inability to pinpoint what he might do next. The threads of exploration - history, context, the nexus between design and art and imaginative transformation - remain constant, but new work always comes from unexpected places. In this new body of work In Dust Real, the artist takes ornate, elegant, thin porcelain dinnerware from 19th Century designs, assembles them into a still life, and then puts them through a Japanese-style anagama wood-firing. This fierce technique leaves deposits of ash and bright orange scorch marks from the flame. The delicacy of these Danish factory porcelains contrasts the different concepts of beauty between two cultures and leaves us wondering what cataclysm brought them together in this way.
         
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