Yolanda Prieto

Yolanda Prieto makes vessels. They are large, between sixty and a hundred and ten centimetres, thrown in sections and joined, and they are not functional in any sense she is interested in defending. The work is in the glaze.

Prieto formulates her glazes from wood ash, and she is specific about the source. A batch is made from a single felled tree, usually one she has arranged to collect from municipal works in Amsterdam or the Gooi, and the results are labelled accordingly: elm, Amsterdam Oost, 2023. Different species carry different mineral loads, so an elm glaze and a beech glaze from the same kiln, on the same clay body, will not resemble each other at all. She keeps records going back to 1994 and treats them as the real archive of the practice.

The pieces are fired between four and nine times. Each firing melts the glaze further, and at a certain point it begins to move, running down the wall of the vessel and pooling in a thick foot at the base. Prieto stops when the pooling reaches a depth she likes and the piece has not yet fused to the kiln shelf. The failure rate is high. She has said that the ones that stick to the shelf are usually the most interesting, which is the problem.

Prieto trained in Bogotá and at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie. Her work is held by the Stedelijk Museum ‘s-Hertogenbosch, the Museum of Fine Arts Houston and Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogotá. She joined the gallery in 2013.