With these handcrafted pieces, Sachs unveils an unconventional approach to porcelain creation, celebrating the tactile and the imperfect.
September 27, 2023 (München, Germany) – Artist Rolf Sachs unveils an exclusive limited collection of candlesticks titled ‘Berührung’ which translates as ‘touch’ in English, in collaboration with the historic Porzellan Manufaktur Nymphenburg, available from October 24, 2023.
Striking a balance between faire and laisser-faire, this collection highlights Sachs’ empathetic and sensual approach to creativity and encapsulates the artist’s vision of producing ‘arts emotionels instead of arts décoratifs,’. The porcelain is molded with verve, shaped with intuition, bent and pressed with impulse. The candlesticks express Sachs’ endless fascination with the concept of imperfection: ‘Perfection often seems a little sterile. I have a love of flaws. By nature, humans are not perfect and if we are, we are probably boring,’ Sachs suggests. Despite many years of cooperation with Nymphenburg, porcelain remains something special for the artist. It is a moving experience to feel the fine material with his hands, to shape it and to deal with it, even more: to engage with it with all his senses.
The ‘Berührung’ collection epitomizes a deliberate break from today's predominant perfectionism as a general standard and is intended to encourage us to acknowledge imperfections and celebrate them. For the artist, the focus of his work has always been the examination of people: ‘The more truthful we are, the more we show of our character,’ Sachs calls on us to stop hiding our flaws and instead live and even enjoy them. ‘Berührung’, in keeping with the tradition of Porzellan Manufaktur Nymphenburg, can act as a centerpiece on a dining table, becoming the focal point of conversations and exchanges. It also invites us to reconsider and discover the soul of porcelain.
The ‘Berührung’ candlesticks are a testament to Sachs’ unconventional use of the material, inviting the manufacturer to approach it in new ways. With Sachs’ intervention, they become original, poetic one- offs that come in all shapes and sizes: small and large, high and low, in pure white bisque porcelain or stained with colored glazes. Contrary to its usual transparency and delicacy, the bisque porcelain is full of fractures, fingerprints, and seemingly arbitrary shapes, offering a new language than its usual finesse. Sachs approaches the medium more spontaneously, molding, turning, embossing, painting, and firing it with great freedom.
Retail Prices for the ‘Berührung’ series start from 800 €.
NOTES TO EDITORS:
‘Berührung’
Design: Rolf Sachs, Artist's unique pieces, bisque porcelain, partially hand-painted with colored glaze, various sizes.
ROLF SACHS
Rolf Sachs is a multi-disciplinary artist and designer currently based in Rome. He applies a distinctive humane and conceptual approach across a multitude of mediums, ranging from sculpture, painting, photography and design and through to architectural projects and set designs for opera and ballet. His move to Rome has inspired Sachs to finally dedicate himself seriously to painting. Since the 1990s, Sachs has challenged preconceived applications of materials, processes, and everyday objects, imbuing them with novel meaning. Deftly employing humour and wit, his work seeks to elicit emotional, sensory reactions. However, his work has nothing of the dryness that is often associated with conceptual art. Rather, it is full of humanity, sensibility, and respect towards the materials he uses. It is poetic, humorous, tongue and cheek, but never irreverent. His work is particularly focused on exploring the human psyche, people’s character, relationships, soul and spirit.
His work has been exhibited internationally in galleries and museums!
Sachs was born in Lausanne, Switzerland in 1955, to a German father and French mother. After studying in the US and the UK in the late 1980s, Sachs moved to London in 1994 to focus on his artistic practice. In 2018 he moved to Rome where he opened a new studio in 2020.
PORZELLAN MANUFAKTUR NYMPHENBURG
Nymphenburg is the last purest manufactory of its kind. Since its foundation in 1747, the high art of porcelain production has been cultivated at the manufactory of the Bavarian royal family. Manu factum means there to this day: made entirely by hand using techniques that have been handed down and preserved from generation to generation. Ahead of their time, the master workshops at the Nördliches Schlossrondell in Munich produce style-defining services and artefacts as well as custom-made interior solutions - designed to this day by the most renowned artists, architects and designers of their time.
Image Credits:
1.‘Berührung’ by Rolf Sachs. Courtesy of The Nymphenburg Porcelain Manufactory.
2.‘Berührung’ by Rolf Sachs. Courtesy of The Nymphenburg Porcelain Manufactory.
3.The Making of ‘Berührung’ by Rolf Sachs. Photography by ROCKA Studio. Courtesy of The Nymphenburg Porcelain Manufactory.