Sculptures by Berta Blanca T. Ivanow

Ceramics by Berta Blanca T. Ivanow, a representation of gestation in the womb, the return to the uterus and the origin. Finely captured by Tea Sirbiladze.

"Perhaps l have undertaken this journey a hundred times before and l inevitably reach the same place, the silence prior to life. The process of creation is an act of surrendering to the unknown, to chance, error, multiplicity, transformation. Each phase of creation imprints marks and wounds on the surface and heart of each artwork. Happenstance and intuition beget a new being, gently unfolding its truth and shaping its purpose.

My practice offers a powerful metaphor for the cycle of life that has further inspired me to expand the exploration to include the Quintessence, the Universal Consciousness. The void, the ether; impalpable but present within us and the entire universe. The fifth element allows me to build a bridge connecting the sacred with the profane.

The denouement is an open, penetrable and meditative object. Sculptures that embrace, encircle and wind around each other, bend over, stick sharply and disappear. Shapes that inhabit a fantasized world of implicit eroticism and ambiguous sensuality. Three-dimensional objects that blur the boundaries between figurative and abstract and embody a fluctuant in-between state."