About
My name is Jens Wollinger. The sculptures you see are all made from stoneware clay. From the first years striving for clarity in form and color, for a few years now I have been searching for a kind of sincerity beyond symmetry, the precise glaze and the consistent detail in working with clay. Instead, I now welcome the changeable abstract as well as the precise. When I see a sculpture, I want to see traces of the human who shaped the clay. The hands that created, unevenness in the textures, subtle fingerprints that may appear after firing.
I apply colors and textures mainly in the form of engobes and my own mixed clay before the bisque firing, the first of two firings. After this, I often use sulfate and oxides for the final details, linked to the unique sculpture and the character that has taken shape. I am often restrained at this stage and try to emphasize the different clays I have used.
On some level, all of my sculptures revolve around what it means to be human. The starting point for my work is that each sculpture tells a story that deals with this very subject. I try to give thoughts about the upcoming sculpture space to grow and be open to them changing as the clay takes its own path.