BALIK
Balik was our first try at a “large” extrusion dies, and was not as easy as we thought!
We totally underestimated how strong can a mass of clay be under pressure. Many dies broke, many attempts to push out the clay failed.. but thanks to all those experiments we were getting better at understanding the material and the process. Soon we would be able to extrude shapes we want, as easily as you would think. That process of personal research and development took us more than a year, therefore that technique is naturally, at the moment, the core of our studio.
Balik was born from the idea of removing clay from its “usual” field. We wanted to remind that before being porcelain cups or vases, clay is a building material, something we can step or sit on, something we can trust. Instinctively we began to extrude our own “brick”, our own module to build different kind of structures/sculptures.
Of course, we couldn’t resist and glaze or extrude those bricks in different colors. So we did! Triggering questions about production processes that surround us by only changing the shape and the color of a brick is what we aim at!
“By the materials that compose it, Balik is in essence both fragile and robust. In this reinterpretation of the seat Studio Biskt realizes a metal base that, like two river banks, that would be linked by an extruded clay junction. Glazed in different shades of colours, Balik aspires to the outdoors and evokes, in its composition and possibility of assembly, multiple variations.”
© Gwénaelle de Spa