Wrinkled

Beauty isn't always about the serene and harmonious. It is often the tension and dissonance that make something truly captivating..

Wrinkled showcases a series of handmade ceramic objects that reflect on the tension between societal ideals of beauty and natural "imperfections", offering a renewed
perception of aesthetics. These one-of-a-kind objects invite viewers to reconsider beauty beyond its surface.

Throughout his artistic practice, Daniel Elkayam has been drawn to the underrated and unseen aspects of aesthetics. Questioning what makes one thing captivating and another unsettling, Wrinkled explores what diverges from conventional ideals of beauty, and expresses the ambivalence and duality of these so-called polar notions: attraction and repulsion. 

The pieces emphasize the fascination of the "unattractive" as an expressive language, delving into the magnetic forces that shape human connections and distances toward visual stimuli. Through this collection, skin evolved from a visual study into a metaphor for identity - carrying social, cultural, and emotional weight that transcends appearance.

These ceramic vases stand as silent sentinels of our society's complex relationship with beauty, challenging the delicate axis between attraction and repulsion, where perceptions of beauty and ugliness continuously shift. In this series, classical elegance is interwoven with raw, textured layers that evoke the visceral struggle between societal ideals and natural imperfections.

Each vase embodies a duality - the smooth, polished curves are disrupted by skin-like surfaces, creating a dialogue between the refined and the flawed. This tension mirrors the human experience, where self-acceptance often collides with external pressures to conform to narrow standards of beauty. It is the hybrids of aesthetics that contrast the binary of attraction and repulsion.

Daniel Elkayam (Jerusalem b. 1992) is a multidisciplinary art-designer and image-maker based in Amsterdam. After completing his MFA in Social Design at Design Academy Eindhoven, his practice melds artistic research methods, material-rich contexts, and storytelling through objects. In his work, Elkayam investigates the boundaries of aesthetics and the space between control and release, uncovering beauty in imperfection and transformation. He reveals over/under-looked phenomena and narratives of temporality, identity, and memory.
His practice, rooted in collectible design and conceptual craftsmanship, transforms materials into visual and poetic narratives that question social and cultural norms.