SVS Professor Joe Pintz’s Solo Exhibition in Berlin, Germany
Joseph Pintz, Ceramics Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in the School of Visual Studies, is showing a significant body of his work in Europe for the first time. Pintz was invited by Pascal Johanssen, curator at the Direktorenhaus Museum of Art, Craft & Design in Berlin, Germany, to have a solo exhibition. Pintz has previously shown his work in two group shows at the museum in 2020 and 2021 and began planning this exhibition in 2024.
Putting together a show like this overseas takes time as well as the support from this academic institution. Pintz shared how the funding was used for many aspects of the exhibition. “I was fortunate to have the support of a MU Research Council grant to produce this body of work. I used part of the funds to travel to Berlin in September to install my work along with additional funding from an A&S Faculty International Travel grant. Another part of the funding went to pay an undergrad to be my studio assistant over the summer as well as to cover the cost of shipping my work overseas.”
While the creation of this exhibit was labor intensive, it was also an emotional process for Professor Pintz to reflect on his upbringing and how the connection to family has shaped him. “Both of my parents migrated from Germany in the 1950s after being forced to leave the land their families had settled for hundreds of years during World War II. Both my mom and my dad, along with their parents, settled in Chicago where they later met and married. Transplanted from their native culture to the Windy City, it was there that the old and new world began to blend together.”
Pintz also considered the importance of physical labor that he learned from his family. “I was born the third of four children into a working-class family My grandparents all worked with their hands: a tailor on my father’s side and a blacksmith on my mother’s. Both my parents loved to cook and took great pride in their flower and vegetable gardens. Nearly every meal was eaten together at home around the dinner table, featuring fresh vegetables or those we had canned. The physicality of cooking and gardening always had a way of bringing us together. Through experiences like this, my parents taught me the values of working with your hands and being self-sufficient.” When thinking back on his past, Pintz is filled with a sense of satisfaction both as an artist and an educator. “It feels like coming full circle to have my artwork on display in Germany. I know my parents and grandparents would be proud of what I have accomplished as a first-generation college student and now as a professor.”
Pintz builds on his work that “explores the role that domestic objects play in fulfilling our physical and emotional needs. Inspired by my Midwestern roots, I create mundane forms based on utilitarian vessels and other objects associated with the hand.” Pintz solo exhibition at Direktorenhaus entitled Dwell consists of two separate but related works in adjoining rooms. As one enters the first room, the viewer sees a series of five groupings of roughhewn ceramic spoons hanging on the wall, with each group being shaped and colored differently. “Spoons are what we use to eat our sustenance and by extension are a symbol of what sustain us.” When entering the second room, the viewer comes upon a series of bricks hanging on the wall, serving as a metaphor for how all of us actively construct a sense of place. The soft light from the large windows comes into the gallery space, bringing out the subtle, muted colors of each piece.
“By presenting these mundane objects in a different context, it causes us to rethink our relationship to them. ‘Defamiliarization’ is the process of making common things appear strange to renew perception, a term first coined by Russian literary theorist and critic Viktor Shklovsky. Similarly, I take these familiar forms and give them a little bit of wobble. By recontextualizing the mundane, my artwork prompts us to reflect on our connections to these objects and the concepts they represent.”
