The Hyper-Real or Super-Real object:

The hyper-real object is also realistic and offers a credible imitation of another object or material. Ceramics here again succeeds in imitating another material (wood, leather, metal are favorites) but the idea is not to deceive either. It is interesting to note that before the advent of plastics, ceramics was the best, possibly the only, material who could imitate other materials so readily and successfully. Again this is a characteristic of the material at the physical level and of the art form at the conceptual level that is intrinsic to it and distinguishes it from other materials and other art forms. What is distinctive about the hyper-real object is that it is contextualized in such a way that the deception that could otherwise take place cannot operate. The intent is to question how materials affect our perception in art experiences. The faux leather cups of Marilyn Levine are of this type. They have highly illusionist leather and metal surfaces, an illusion altogether reinforced and contested by the laces and zippers, which are actually real, yet their shape, a cup, equally contests our expectations and make us reassess our relationship to materials, and their hierarchies, in an art context.  Since the form is that of a cup and their surface is that of old, weathered leather, these objects are not believable as actual things, since leather is not used to make cups, not cups with zippers and laces, anyway. There is an illusion, since clay is made to look like leather but the illusion is contested by the fact that the object is in the shape of a cup. If Marylin Levine’s other ceramic sculptures, suitcases, old boots and shoes and leather jackets, are true trompe-l’oeil and operate in a psychological manner by directing then contesting our expectations as defined by experience, her hyper-real cups are much more conceptual and they question, by using a blatantly ceramic format, the cup, our habitual relation to the art form itself, pottery and by extension, ceramics.

The art installations of Kumiyo Mishima in Japan, where ceramic newspapers and bundles are used for similar ends or the sculptural assemblages of Karen Dahl, in Canada, are of this type. In Dahl’s work, the juxtaposition of highly realistic ceramic imitations of books, fruits (cabbages are a favorite here as well), tools and toys in a context that is destabilizing and unreal creates the hyper-reality.  Her work at times contextualizes the objects in ways that connects her art to surrealism, as well. The work of Californian David Furman also belongs in the hyper-real category, for similar reasons. While the realism and confusion of materials is totally deceptive at first, the organization and presentation of the elements composing the tableaux are too unrealistic, on purpose, to be anything but hyper-real, transcending reality in obvious ways, such as when an rubber eraser (for example), in an arrested gesture, is seen drowning into a cup of coffee, all made in ceramics, of course. The scene depicted may appear real but the action, by being stopped, behaves in a hyper-real fashion. With the hyper-real object, the behavior is possibly logical but that behavior has been modified by the ceramic context. His work makes numerous, subtle references to ceramic objects, ceramic materials, techniques and processes, in ways that greatly inform the initiated but is nonetheless accessible to the neophyte who takes the time to observe closely.