STRUCTURE AND SURFACE 
2025 International Ceramic Symposium

4 - 29 August, 2025

STRUCTURE AND SURFACE

Returning to the tradition of previous years, the 2025 symposium will once again be organised around a central theme. This year’s guiding concept is: ‘Structures and Surfaces’. While the theme is open to free and creative interpretation, we hope to inspire works that explore form-making through structural or system- based thinking and construction. Clay, as a medium, offers exceptional possibilities for expressing such an approach—whether through abstract or functional forms.

We are particularly interested in approaches where the inherent properties of the material, the applied techniques, and distinctive surface treatments play a defining role in shaping the aesthetic and conceptual qualities of the final objects. We trust that this year’s theme will provide a rich and inspiring starting point for every invited artist and will encourage the emergence of diverse, personal artistic interpretations.

STRUCTURE AND SURFACE

 JIANSHEN LI

 China

Jianshen "Jackson" Li is a ceramic artist known for his work that blends traditional Chinese ceramic techniques with contemporary artistic expression. He has exhibited internationally and his work often explores themes related to cultural identity, history, and the relationship between the past and present.

He is known for his innovative use of traditional Chinese ceramic techniques, often incorporating them into contemporary forms and concepts. His work often explores themes related to cultural identity, the history of ceramics, and the relationship between tradition and modernity.
 concepts.

Li breathes life and passion into his works of clay, his works expressing beauty and vulnerability, strength and vigor.

Jackson Li was born in China and holds degrees from both the Jingdezhen Ceramic Institute and the New York State College of Ceramic Arts at Alfred University.

Artist website

 SIMON ZSOLT JÓZSEF

 Hungary

My life is movement.

If somebody watches me during sculpturing he or she says it looks like massage or a dance with clay.

When I teach movement or I do movement, I feel like sculpturing with the space around me.

To press, to release, to form.

My paintings, drawings and sculptures are movement studies without real forms. I didn’t want to catch the forms but the process of forming. Not the fruit or the flower, which are always changing and growing but the growth and change itself, which will form the material once.

The movements in the drawings, sculptures and paintings rather touch the material than really form it. They are coming and suddenly disappearing.

I am trying to reserve the experience of easy and light forming before being stuck in material.

Artist website

 KECSKEMÉTI SÁNDOR

 Hungary 

Sándor Kecskeméti is an internationally renowned, Munkácsy Prize-winning ceramicist and sculptor, an iconic figure of Hungarian contemporary ceramic art.
He graduated as a ceramist from the College of Applied Arts in 1972 and after his studies he worked as an independent artist in Budapest, and from the second half of the 1980s he also had a studio in Gundremmingen, Germany.

Throughout his career, he has uniquely combined traditional craftsmanship with a contemporary sense of form and an experimental approach - in his work, material is not just a tool, but a way of thinking. His formal language is marked and unmistakable. At once geometric and organic, closed and open, weighty and airy. In his work, we often find architectural elements, from which delicate, plant or anthropomorphic forms emerge. The dynamics of tension and balance are in constant play. All his work tests the relationship between space and time, exploring how material becomes part of our memory, how an object can preserve movement, touch, thought.

 FUZESI ZSUZSA

 Hungary 

In my creative work, I follow iterations of a single chosen pattern to build an object: I repeat this over and over again, adapting it to different spatial directions. The symmetry of the size ranges is also embodied in the self-similar pattern. As the form adapts to the space I imagine, its volume changes. With this simple method, a variety of complex forms is created.

Although all forms are built in the same system, changing certain factors, such as the form of the repeating element, the plastic training of the base, the shaping of spatial directions — always creates a new object quality. My creative intention is to display the internal properties inherent in the micro-dimensions of the clay mineral in macro-dimensions, and to embed these properties in a kind of fractal geometric system. The clay mineral is suitable for modelling tail bowl formations, and in such a way that it also reflects the nonlinear dynamics and unstable movement of its own internal structure in the created forms.

 MÁDER BARNABAS

 Hungary

He graduated as a porcelain designer at MIE in
2003.
He has been teaching at the Silicate Department of
MOME, at the Art Institute of János Harsányi
College, at the Metropolitan University since 2018.

In his professional work, he focuses on functional
porcelain works and individual sculptural pieces.
In 2019, he won the 1st prize of the Blanc de Chine
International Ceramic Art Award for his work 'Lace'.

Artist website

 LUBJICA JOCIC-KNEZEVIC

 Serbia

Ljubica Knezevic holds a master's degree in ceramic art from the Belgrade Institute of Applied Arts and Design and a Ph.D. in applied arts and design from the Belgrade University of the Arts. She is currently an assistant professor of ceramic art at the Belgrade University of the Arts. She has participated in cultural exchange programs, seminars, art fairs and guest lecturers around the world. She has won the 2016 Taiwan Ceramic Biennale Merit Award, the Japan MINO Contemporary Ceramics International Competition Excellence Award, and has held 12 solo exhibitions and more than 120 group exhibitions in Australia, the United States, Japan and Taiwan. Her work has been collected by the Saatchi Gallery in London, England and the US Sculpture Objects Functional Art (SOFA).



 MARUSA MAZEJ

 Slovenia

"The work is the product of a symbiosis between the random and the controlled. It holds within itself the contrast of the modern world, which is constantly seeking a balance between the analog/manual and the digital/technological. Technology is an omnipresent element that often makes life easier, but life without analog cannot exist. It encourages reflection on finding a balance between the tactile and the visual; we should not be afraid of technology, but we should not forget the manual."

Maruša Mazej, born in 1995, is currently self-employed in the cultural field of design. In addition to creating her own products, she also works as an external collaborator at ALUO, where she teaches at the Applied Arts Department, Ceramics. She is an active member of the Biskvit collective, which is involved in education and running workshops in the field of ceramics. In 2021, she graduated from the Applied Arts Department at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Ljubljana with a Master’s degree with distinction. She tries her best and exhibits at home and abroad.

Artist website

Kecskeméti Kortárs Művészeti Műhelyek
NEMZETKÖZI KERÁMIA STÚDIÓ

Kecskemét Contemporary Art Studios
INTERNATIONAL CERAMICS STUDIO

Address:

Kápolna u.11,
Kecskemét 6000
Hungary

Phone:
+36 76 486867

Email:

Steve Mattison: icshu@me.com 
Erika Sütő: studiovezeto@kkmm.hu
NKS Office: icshu@t-online.hu

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