Uriel Caspi has been fascinated with clay since his early childhood. He has developed unique working methods and his own visual vocabulary to explore and expand the spectrum of vessel-body-sculpture. Caspi’s investigations in clay allows him to manipulate traditional forms into ‘embodied objects,’ and to extrapolate familiar human genetics into abstract forms, where nature and technology become indistinguishable.
Originally from the Middle East, Caspi cites archaeological remnants as key conceptual cornerstones in his work. Relics from antiquity are subject to his contemporary interpretations, and collide with multicultural references from across the globe. This amalgam of influences allows Caspi to perform a sort of inner excavation, revealing narratives, memories, and personal sediments that compose the iconography of his art. His immersive installations of ceramics operate as platforms for artistic interactions, and reflect both the aesthetics of antiquity and a visionary environment of the future.
Navigating between arts and crafts, traditions and innovations, cultures and histories, Caspi’s creative practice encompasses visual and conceptual aspects as well as research into material culture and global heritage of ceramics. During the recent years, he is preserving alternative clay modelling and glazing techniques from antiquity, skills which have almost vanished due to an extensive global industrialization. Qualities and aesthetics of traditional techniques are occasionally combined with digital fabrication, and demonstrate the predictability and randomness of ceramic materials, their processes, and their broad limits.
Uriel Caspi has been working internationally as an artist-in-residence and in academia. He has exhibited works and installations in museums, galleries, art fairs, and venues across the world including the Armory Show with Yossi Milo Gallery (New York), Sculpture Space (New York), Museo Internazionale Delle Ceramiche (Faenza, Italy) Salon C-14 (Paris), Keramikmuseum Westerwald (Höhr-Grenzhausen, Germany), Eretz Israel Museum (Tel Aviv), New Taipei City Yingge Ceramics Museum (New Taipei City, Taiwan), and Mino Ceramic Art Museum (Tajimi Japan).
Caspi received the Hecht Foundation Award for Emerging Artists in 2019 and the Artis Foundation Grant in 2023. He has been artist-in-residence at the Archie Bray Foundation for the Ceramic Arts (Helena, MT); the New Taipei City Yingge Ceramics Museum, at the European Ceramic Workcentre (Oisterwijk, the Netherlands), and at the Keramikkünstlerhaus Neumünster (Neumünster, Germany.) He received a BFA in ceramics from Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design (Jerusalem) in 2018, and an MFA in ceramic art from the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University (Alfred, NY) in 2021. He is a visiting artist at CERCCO, Geneva University of Art and Design (Switzerland). Caspi was born in Haifa, Israel, and currently based in Tilburg, the Netherlands.