Robert Froese

Sculptural ceramic installation informed by artist’s musical background.

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The aphorism “music is a universal language” could well be said of pottery as well. Ceramics predate the invention of agriculture and are one of the earliest art forms of cultures around the world. 

Perhaps that’s why Measured Composition [2020], an exhibition of ceramic vessels informed by musical principles, achieves both an earthy, familiar quality and a sense of temporal and cultural transcendence. 

Robert Froese’s work, placed on accessible shelving, undulating wooden platforms and even the floor of the Moose Jaw Museum and Art Gallery, appears as a tumbling array of cups, plates and vases, alongside the occasional indeterminate and enigmatic ceramic form. 

The work, on view until May 3, looks like it could have been created within any culture at any time in human history. Tactile and conceptually rich, the installation explores the relationship between Froese's sculptural practice and his love of playing jazz and blues on the piano. 

Froese explains this creative correspondence in discussion with Mireille Perron, the Calgary artist who wrote his exhibition essay: “When I shape clay, or arrange chords, melodies and frequencies on the acoustic piano, I enter a similar physical and mental space.”

Conceptually, Froese is influenced by avant-garde composers, including John Cage, and Mexican visual artist Gabriel Orozco. Like Orozco, Froese incorporates common objects in ways that allow viewers to consider familiar forms in a new light. Repetition, chance and impulse play a role, as do correspondences between musical tone and colour, as well as rhythm and the physical placement of objects. 

Froese reconfigures the installation each time it’s exhibited, much the way musicians improvise while performing. Measured Composition [2020] thus exudes the expressiveness of a live concert, rather than the restraint of a studio recording. 

Viewing the pottery – some pieces pockmarked as if by erosion, many left unglazed, some warped or broken – feels like visiting an archaeological site and becoming a voyeur of vanished and, perhaps, vanquished civilizations. 

There’s an invitation to pause and consider assumptions of permanence in relation to culture, remembering that all things evolve and pass away, just the way music vanishes once performed.

The exhibition builds on Froese’s 2018 MFA thesis exhibition at the Alberta University of the Arts in Calgary and incorporates his 2019 exhibition, Tone Poems, at Medalta in Medicine Hat, Alta. Froese, who grew up in Moose Jaw, is represented by the Slate Fine Art Gallery in Regina. ■ 

Measured Composition [2020] is on view at the Moose Jaw Museum and Art Gallery in Saskatchewan from Feb. 7 to May 3, 2020.

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Moose Jaw Museum & Art Gallery

461 Langdon Crescent, Crescent Park, Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan S6H 0X6

306-692-4471

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