As in many of the works by artist Hanna-Maria Hammari, in Brainsies we see traces of a frozen moment. Resembling cerebral cortexes, the ceramic sculptures appear glazed and still. Yet the eye is restless as it travels across the hills and valleys of their form. Each crest dips down into a trough, twisting down through the channels and up the rim—an image of an ocean mid-storm or a similar, reciprocal dance formed by waves. The endless drama of tension and release is petrified by the scorching heat of the furnace, evaporating all liquidity. Not just the active flow that sustains our bodies, water is also our connection to each other and the environment around us. In Hammari’s sculptures, we are stared down by an abysmal dehydration. 

text: Ben Livne Weitzman, curator and writer, Frankfurt