MARGARETA MELIN. Sculpture, corso, raku-fired ceramic, unique.

Plinth made of metal. Height 32 cm.

This sculpture by Margareta Melin is an expression of the presence of the body in the room -- a torso, stripped of all exuberance, but charged with movement, warmth and life. The form is simple but sensual, clearly inspired by the flow of the dance and the natural lines of the body. The surface, with its crackling colour shifts in coppery red, blue and black, is the result of the intense and unpredictable process of raku burning — fire, smoke and chance in concert.

Margareta Melin is a ceramicist based in Norra Grundsund, Bohuslän, where she works with both ceramic and sculpture, but above all with the expressive and unpredictable Raku technique. Her art is characterized by a clean and stripped-down design language, where each form carries a sense of reflection and movement — often inspired by the rhythm of dance and the lines of the body. With great respect for the possibilities and limitations of clay, Melin is constantly looking for new ways, new expressions, new techniques.

It is in raku-burning's dramatic encounter between fire, smoke and rapid cooling that her work truly takes shape -- in a process that is as much ritual as creation. The surfaces acquire a unique character, sometimes with cracks which, according to Japanese tradition, are enhanced with gold leaf through kintsugi, and each object becomes a testament to the beauty of the imperfect.

For Margareta Melin, aesthetic expression is central, but it is also in the contingency — in the gap between control and chance — that her art comes to life. It is ceramics as life form, as body, as movement — always rooted in the craft, but with the gaze directed towards artistic exploration.