For this exhibition of Norwegian contemporary ceramics we took the liberty of borrowing a title from the French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss' classic study of myths. He used this image from cooking as an expression for a fundamental opposition between the natural, raw, and what is created by culture, the cooked.

However, the cooking process implies a transformation or transition from nature to culture, and the parallel between the chefs' and the ceramicists' work should not be difficult to notice. The title therefore is useful as a metaphor for the ceramic process: from the natural product of raw clay to a cultural product through processing and burning.

The exhibition includes art objects that thematize different stages in this process: from raw to cooked, from chaos to order, from formless to firm. In 1993, the same title was used for an exhibition with new work in clay in Great Britain. This clear a path away from the functional and useful, to objects and expressive vessels, a tendency that also influenced Norwegian ceramics in the 1980s.

Yet today's ceramics encompass even more courses. With the impact of globalization and the shutdown of industrial production in Europe, techniques and materials from the ceramic industry have found their way into studio ceramics. Already "cooked" objects serve as raw material for many younger ceramicists. In the gap between material, matter and meaning, the concept of ceramics is more open than ever.

Jorunn Veitberg