PARIS.- Carpenters Workshop Gallery announces its latest exhibition by Aneta Regel. The Polish artist based in London exhibits ‘Gneiss’ a solo show of ceramic sculptures from her collection at the gallery’s space in Paris.

Gneiss is a foliated metamorphic rock identified by its bands and lenses of varying composition, while other bands contain granular minerals with an interlocking texture.

Pushing the idea of functional sculpture to its aesthetic limits, Aneta Regel differs to many ceramic sculptors as she takes inspiration from nature rather than the human form. Drawing on natural forms including rocks, riverbeds and fields, the artist seeks to encapsulate the energies and rhythms of her subject and foremost the emotional response they invoke. She aims to create her vision of reality, a physical description of the landscape.

Although she uses natural forms as the basis of her work, Aneta Regel states that she ‘creates objects that exist neither in the natural or manufactured world, but which, once brought into being, can reflect and transmit information and feelings about nature and my (her) own existence’.

Aneta Regel uses raw materials such as rock and clay, manipulating them to resemble other textures found in the natural world such as tree bark, moss and coral. Her works usually remain unglazed and only partially colored in order to convey the dynamic tension between power and finesse, the passage from one state to another.

Furthermore, through this comparison of the two worlds, Aneta Regel conveys the ‘dynamic friction from the natural world to the constructed world’.

Inspired by the landscapes of her native Poland, her sculptures represent the emotional attachment to her surroundings and her sense of awe in the face of nature. There is a romanticism to her work. The movements and energy of nature that are captured combined with her own emotional experiences demand empathy from the viewer.

Born in 1976 and raised in Poland, Aneta Regel graduated from the Royal College of Art in 2006 with a Masters in Ceramics and Glass. Fundamentally rejecting the title of ‘potter’, Aneta Regel classes herself as a ceramic sculptor, a term more accurate for the pieces she creates. She does not acknowledge clay as a lower-tiered or craft material. Aneta Regel has exhibited her sculptures all over the world, including the US, Brussels and Poland.

Aneta Regel’s most important exhibitions have been in the UK, where she has showcased her work in prominent group shows at the Tate Modern and the Saatchi Gallery. She has recently taken part in the British Ceramics Biennial, a show that celebrates contemporary ceramics from around the world. In 2014 she became a member of the Royal British Society of Sculptors.

Based in Stoke Newington, London’s artistic hotbed, Aneta Regel creates her ceramic sculptures at the Chocolate Factory, a community of artists’ studios and former confectionary manufacturer, now home to some of London’s most innovative artists.