Torbjørn Kvasbø

Torbjørn Kvasbø (Norwegian, b. 1953) is an internationally acclaimed ceramic artist, with a career spanning several decades. Kvasbø’s practice challenges and pushes his own personal boundaries, as well as the physical possibilities of the medium. In his ongoing Stacked series, he reimagines the archetypical form of the vessel, creating upwardly spiraling sculptures from stacked tubes of extruded clay, often on a monumental scale. In the artist’s words, “My work process in the medium of clay offers a lot of resistance, and it reveals to me the forces over which I have no control – the incalculable elements of my inner being. My emotions and feelings are physically discharged into the work, and they become actual experiences themselves.” Through this transference of energy into the material, Kvasbø continues in the centuries-old tradition of the artist as alchemist.

Torbjørn Kvasbø lives and works in Venabygd, Norway. He was Head of the Ceramics Department at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden from 1996-2000, and Head of the Ceramic and Glass Department at Konstfack, Stockholm, Sweden from 2000-2008. His work has been exhibited extensively, including solo exhibitions at institutions throughout the world. Kvasbø is represented in the permanent collections of Designmuseum Danmark, Copenhagen; Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, Sweden; The National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design, Oslo, Norway; The National Museum of Decorative Arts, Trondheim, Norway; The Röhsska Museum, Gothenburg, Sweden; Museum of Modern Ceramic Art, Gifu Ceramics-Park Mino, Gifu, Japan; Museo Internazionale delle Ceramiche, Faenza, Italy; Musée National Adrien Dubouché, Limoges, France; Lillehammer Art Museum, Norway; KODE Art Museums of Bergen, Norway; Icheon World Ceramic Center, Icheon, South Korea; and the Auckland Museum Institute, Auckland, New Zealand, among many others.