Name: Glamorous and enigmatic: Ceramic creatures by Markus Karstieß
Uploaded: 2025-12-06T15:14:45.863Z
Duration: 4 min 8 s
Description: He transforms ancient material into modern, mysterious creations. Artist Markus Karstieß’s ceramic sculptures, with unusual shapes and iridescent glazes, are somewhere between monsters, humans, and mythical creatures.

He transforms ancient material into modern, mysterious creations. Artist Markus Karstieß’s ceramic sculptures, with unusual shapes and iridescent glazes, are somewhere between monsters, humans, and mythical creatures.

Düsseldorf

Sculptor and professor Markus Karstieß is exhibiting 30 of his ceramic and bronze sculptures at the Vonderhaidt Museum in Wuppertal, Germany. His creative process involves hand-shaping clay without preliminary sketches and experimenting with glazes, sometimes resulting in unexpected but desired effects.

Karstieß draws inspiration from historical artifacts and artworks, such as Roman fresco fragments and paintings by Paula Modersohn-Becker. His works combine elements from different eras, with some pieces referencing Renaissance designs and contemporary metaphors, like surfing, to express the unpredictability of the artistic process.

Glamorous and enigmatic: Ceramic creatures by Markus Karstieß

To achieve the right look, bronze masks are patinated at the Schmäker Art Foundry in Düsseldorf. Dominik Schmäker works his magic with fire, acids and water, transforming the color and appearance of masks in agreement with sculptor Markus Karsties. It's beautiful where it starts to overlap, this cloudiness. I usually work a lot with ceramics, and I also work with luster glazes, which basically react to metals too, but that all happens in the kiln, so you can't actually see it. This is exciting. You can see the materials reacting with each other live. All that's missing now are the eyes. Karsties will add these in his studio, before the masks are taken to the museum in Wuppertal. So these are fragments of Roman frescoes from around 100 or 200 BC, which I bought at auction at an antique dealer's in London. The sculptor first created plaster models for the bronzes. The facial expressions were actually blown into the wet plaster. A particularly complicated technique? No, just blow. Markus Karsties is 54, a sculptor and professor. He studied at the Düsseldorf Art Academy and teaches fine art ceramics at Koblenz University of Applied Sciences. His studio is something like his powerhouse. Most of my work I do directly with my hands. It's a bit like an oracle. You can do this every day, and at the end of the day, there's always a different sculpture there. He shapes the clay without any preliminary sketches, creating in the moment. In the kiln, the clay is then transformed into a ceramic work of art with special glazes. Clay does its own thing. Not everything that comes out of the kiln is perfect, but it's always a gift. Out of the studio and into the museum. Markus Karsties is exhibiting 30 sculptures at the Vonderhaidt Museum in Wuppertal. The bronze masks on the wall gaze at enigmatic creatures. The variety of surfaces on his ceramic sculptures is created using different glazes. The giant has two glazes. The yellow is a relatively toxic cadmium yellow, and on top of that is a second glaze, which behaves quite differently because it starts to shrink as it dries, as it is applied, so to speak. So I wanted a lizard-like glaze, but then I actually made a mistake when mixing it. I put way too much of it in, but I got the result I wanted. Sometimes you need a little luck. Karsties has studied works from the Vonderhaidt Museum collection. He was particularly impressed by a painting by Paula Mordason-Becker. Details of the composition, such as the position of the hand, also appear in his work. Markus Karsties brings different worlds and times together in his ceramic sculptures. He stages these lemons, modeled on Renaissance designs, on a surfboard. Well I am a contemporary sculptor, and for me surfing is always a metaphor for navigating in a medium that you can't control yourself.

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