Fernando Casasempere 
Works available
Back to the Earth
2005
Stoneware and porcelain
125 × 74 × 728 cm / 4ft1 1/4 × 2ft5 1/8 × 23ft 10 5/8 ins
Excerpts from The Thought-Provoking Machine 1 - 7
2008
Stoneware and porcelain with industrial waste
35 × 37 × 32 cm / 1 ft 1 ¾ x 1 ft 2 ½ x 1 ft ½ ins
Biography
(1958–)
After studying both ceramics and sculpture in Barcelona, Casasempere returned to his birthplace, Santiago, where he consolidated his studies by working as a ceramics sculptor. After exhibiting extensively, both in Chile and North America, his work began to feature in exhibitions overseas. He then moved to London in 1997, bringing with him over twelve tonnes of his own mixtures of clay, a feat confirming his long-standing obsession with identity and his deep-seated concern for the environment. The Chilean landscape and Pre-Colombian background of the Latin world are ever present in his sculptures and his most recent works combine these influences with the cityscapes and inspirations that London has offered him.
His seven-metre long installation for the New Art Centre, Back to the Earth, 2005, examines the artist's interest in ecology and geology and consists of individual ceramic elements that jut out of the earth, exposing its inner core. These stoneware and porcelain forms can be reconfigured for a different site.
In 2008, a major commission for the Economist Plaza, The Thought-Provoking Machine comprised two industrial conveyor belts carrying Casasempere's ceramic forms, inspired by the effects of machines and mass production on the environment and modern society. Casasempere's new group of sculpture in the park at Roche Court comes from the same series. Seven box-like forms, with the title Excerpts from The Thought-Provoking Machine, are scattered in the undergrowth beneath trees, where they appear to have been discarded like waste products from an unknown industrial process.