Domestication of Fire

2020

Céramique émaillée
47 x 55 x 52 cm

To make this series, Christian Gonzenbach (born 1975) cast various motorcycle, car and truck engines to produce ceramic editions covered in a vivid red-orange glaze whose drips recall that they were born of a melt. Mimicking incandescent metal, the works resemble engines “heated red” by a surge of activity. The series title, Domestication of Fire, harks back to prehistory and the first attempts to control and use an energy essential for warmth, light and cooking. That primordial discovery can be seen as the starting point of a technical history marked by the conquest, mastery and progressive exploitation of natural resources — at the far end of which stands the combustion engine, emblem of the twentieth century and of our dependence on fossil fuels. The motorcycle engine in particular — a symbol of power, freedom, speed and danger (its rider straddling, almost unprotected, a permanent explosion) — is a popular icon of humanity’s pride. Cleverly, Christian Gonzenbach uses ceramic (itself born of a passage through fire) to depict a tool that contains fire, provokes it and channels its energy. The red glaze can also evoke “bloody organs taken from a body-machine”, the engines becoming so many energy-hungry prostheses of a humanity forever seeking to augment itself. With this work, the artist continues to weave an original link between the living, technology and energy.

CHRISTIAN GONZENBACH, domestication du feu, ford diesel, 2021

Domestication du feu (YAMAHA, DT 125 MX 1982)_02