Bio
João Carqueijeiro was born in 1954 and is based in Porto, Portugal. Completed in 1982 the degree in Drawing at Cooperativa Árvore (ESAD), under Sá Nogueira’s mentorship. He pursued his studies in ceramics and specialized in Potter’s Wheel, Stoneware Glazing and Raku at Escola de Ceràmica de la Bisbal, in Catalonia, Spain. Since 1981 he has been teaching ceramics, both Professional Training and in Specialization Courses, as well as Internship Orientation, Workshops and Course Programming. He is a Ceramics Trainer, accredited by the Scientific-Pedagogical Council for Continuing Education since 1995 and by the portuguese Institute for Employment and Vocational Training. Teaches Ceramic Courses at Cooperativa Árvore since 1986, of which he is also a partner. In 2005, was a founding member of the Ceramics Project “Oficina 2000 & 5”. In 2007, he was a member of the Jury, at the 8th International Biennial of Artistic Ceramics in Aveiro. Designed and produced in 2010 a 100 meter ceramic panel for the facade of Crowne Plaza Vilamoura Hotel. In 2011 designed and produced a 10x3 meter modular and tridimensional ceramic glazed panel, for Biennial of Cerveira’s Forum.
Awards
Art Collections Representation
“João Carqueijeiro has been dedicated to ceramics since 1982 being his intrinsic activity.
The high temperature fused slate (a.k.a. pyro-expanded slate), the colored stoneware through iron oxides, the sand jets, the black slates, they are all determining elements of the author's creativity, often polarized between decorative elegance and an earthy rudeness, evocative of primitive expressions.
Thus, the fluidity of linear rhythms and the bodily plasticity of sober volumes, converge in a work of rare seduction punctuated by somewhat ascetic formal purifications. Evident modernity echoes with latent ancestry, allowing it to admit some influence coming from archetypal models of African sign or totemic impact.
The rough or sandy textures are also a constant through unusual objects, in which the magical or dreamlike overtones exceed pragmatic functionality. At times, Carqueijeiro's creativity takes on a combination of humor and cosmological lyricism, stressed by a vitalistic energy that is emblematic of phallic structures, as it can detach from a memory of a great sculpture of Brâncuși, with the evocation of mythical mediterranean amphoras, but shaped by humble everyday artifacts.
In fact, the greatest art of the 20th century owed a lot to the reinvention of traditions submerged in a civilizational subconscious that only the authors of the various aesthetic languages were able to assume, establishing a discourse of inexpressible archeology or a psychoanalysis of a social “habitat”.
Woven with a similar cultural awareness, but erected with an executive rigor, the result of a specific handicraft requirement, affects the chromatism of informal petrified smears, open to nocturnal transparencies or melancholic ashes, Carqueijeiro’s ceramics point to the referred poetics. It therefore restores the full dignity of authentic artistic manifestations to the practice of its craft.”
Fernando Pernes, 1991 (translated from the original in portuguese)
Fernando Duarte Velasco Pernes (1936-2010) was a Portuguese essayist, professor and art critic. Was the first artistic director of the Serralves Foundation. Was awarded the Order of Merit Commendation by the President of the Portuguese Republic as well as the Gold Medal of the City of Porto by the City Council.
