Vernissage fre 6 nov kl 17-20

What happens when a stone becomes an industrial raw material? Feldspar is formed over millions of years and extracted from a particular landscape before reaching ceramic production. It is a component of porcelain and clay bodies and is also used in many ceramic glazes, where it acts as a flux during firing.
As a ceramic artist, Marilen Rauch is interested in what happens when this stone is transformed into fine white powder. The term ‘raw material’ suggests a beginning, something waiting to be transformed. Yet the feldspar bears evidence of a long material history of intense human labour and transportation.

After visiting the former Forshammar mine on a field trip, Marilen Rauch milled feldspar from the site in her self-built ball mill and ceramic jar.
She spent weeks processing the feldspar. Hours of spinning, grinding, sieving, refilling and drying. 28,800 turns in eight hours, repeated until the mill stopped turning. Friction – resisting stone. The process is physical and has its own limits.
Through milling, the physical form of the stone changed. It lost its recognisable solid shape, weight, structure and tactile qualities.
Entering a new material state by becoming fine white particles.

The mill produces a powder that differs from industrially milled feldspar. Powdered, it all looks the same. Anonymous, difficult to distinguish from any other white mineral powder without a label. Once separated from its landscape, the feldspar is no longer visibly connected to the place it came from, but its history remains. The properties and intended use of feldspar take on greater significance than the geological formations, extractive processes and human transformations it embodies. Through the different ways the material is presented and recorded in the exhibition, traces of its former state and history become perceptible again.

The feldspar is a resource, valued for what can be produced from it. When the process stops, and the material is no longer extracted, processed or transformed into a commodity that can be sold, its value and meaning may change. Although the mine closed in 2023, limited amounts of this particular feldspar are still circulating.

When the mill stopped turning, can powder simply remain powder, without immediately becoming something else?
Can we encounter a material beyond its potential to become something else?

Marilen Rauch (b. 1990 DE) is a ceramic artist based in Gothenburg, Sweden. She graduated with a MFA in Ceramic Art from HDK-Valand – Academy of Art and Design in Gothenburg and is currently undertaking the postgraduate programme ‘Of Public Interest’ at the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm.