Height 11 in, length 14 in, width 12 in. Dam is best known for his abstract ceramic forms and matter surfaces. His sculptures reference classic forms, neolithic and Iron Age pots, the human body and nature. He uses stains to create his colors, which are sprayed on the ceramic.

Contemporary abstract sculpture by Dutch artist Wouter Dam features a light green color and dynamic, flowing forms. The piece combines geometric and organic shapes, creating a visually striking composition. 

Wouter Dam has been one of the leading ceramicists in the Netherlands for forty years. Dam, who graduated from the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in 1980, has always related to the tradition of studio pottery, while also distancing himself from it. Throughout his career, Dam has increasingly cut up and broken open his pot forms. In his most recent works, all that remains are fragile bands of clay that dance around each other in graceful compositions. The Kunstmuseum Den Haag presents the first retrospective survey of his impressive body of work.

Wouter Dam initially made simple pot forms with subtle interventions that interrupted their traditional forms. His restrained pots gradually developed into more outspoken objects with indentations and incisions that created more volume. Dam is fascinated by how his objects take up space and by how space penetrates them. To make the interior of his pots play a larger role, Dam elongated them on one side, creating a kind of helmet shape.

In the early 1990s, he rounded off the base of his objects and laid them on one side. He thus bade farewell to the classic pot shape as a useful vessel and embraced the ceramic object as an autonomous sculpture. Another breakthrough followed quite literally in 1998 when Dam decided to cut the bottom out of his objects and open up the form further. This resulted in objects in which, in the right light, for the first time the interior demands more attention than the external form.

At the beginning of the new millennium, Dam opened up the wall of a cylindrical shape and allowed it to collide with another form placed at a right angle to it. Gently curved surfaces were thus interrupted with abrupt lines. Whereas his objects had previously seemed to consist of a single part, their appearance now made clear that they had been assembled. Almost simultaneously, Dam abandoned form as a description of his objects in favour of sculpture.

With the step towards assembly, Dams career entered a period of rapid acceleration. Dam explored different compositions in which bands of clay dance around each other and subtly intersect. 

From the private collection of James Bommarito and Tony's Restaurant, St. Louis MO.