Christian Gonzenbach

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and to a butcher’s eye, the heads and skinned bodies of animals are his trophies to flaunt rather than grotesque animal parts to be discarded or hidden. So in the Black Tales series, the normally repulsive items have been recreated as shiny and attractive objects to be desired and touched. In Sleeping Beauty, black ceramic transforms a calf’s head into a design object, as wells as something frightening and morbid. The same effect is true of The Three Musketeers, which is a 3D still life of four sheep’s heads, and Hansel and Gretel, two skinned rabbits with missing legs. The series explores the futility of our existence through the elements, which have been sublimated by the monochromatic black ceramic, from our immediate and daily environment.