Since the early 1990s, Barbro Åberg has been working steadily at home in Denmark to perfect an aesthetic that, more than three decades on, is immediately recognizable the world-over as her own.
Her remarkable, almost surreal works are rendered in monochrome and are inspired by fossils, vessels, old bones, and coral. She plays on traditional Danish forms, morphing them into something purely sculptural, playful, and decidedly non-utilitarian. Her characteristic use of perlite—a volcanic substance Åberg adds to her clay—endows her pieces with both a rough geologic texture and a refined elegance of form. The sculptures are full of light, negative space, and a uniquely tensile strength.
A look through these images of Barbro's charming garden and studio serves not merely as window into her history and process—her deliberate, meticulous, and ingenious means of creation—but as a taste of the spirit that underlies them and is evident in each of her perlite-infused sculptures. Her garden and studio are one, an oasis where smell of clay mingles with a late-afternoon lunch, and the creative impulse merges, and is indistinguishable from, the seasons, the flora, and the culture of her homeland.
Åberg's pieces are held in the public collections of the Höganäs Art Museum, Sweden; the Musée de Carouge, Switzerland; The Museum of Modern Ceramic Art, Japan; The New Carlsberg Foundation, Denmark; The Danish Arts Foundation, Denmark; The Museum of International Ceramic Art, Denmark; The Danish Museum of Art and Design, Denmark; and in the National Public Art Council, Sweden.
If you'd like to have a look through her available works, please click anywhere on the text of this sentence. And if you have any questions at all, don't hesitate to reach out at home@maisongerard.com.
