The words of a critic

Ivan Skubin is a close acquaintance of the admirers of and experts on ceramic arts, who meet and exchange information about contemporary trends in this ancient art in the Ex-tempo Exhibition of Ceramics in Piran. It was first organized in 2000 and has since become more and more renown.  Participating at it from its very beginning, Skubin has constantly been in the centre of actual ceramic events; his creations have always provided the focus of experts, on, so to say, such a high quality level, where the best are selected – the receivers of awards. However, in 2002 it simply had to happen. Skubin’s ceramic vessel The Bird with its beauty and perfect shaping was absolutely outstanding. *

An inseparable part of each Ivan Skubin’s ceramic form is its technological reality – the way, in which an aesthetic component of the creation is achieved. And without Skubin’s own alchemy and experience, based on research, both of them the sources of his power, we could not speak of a good ceramic art. Being an expert in technology, Skubin does not have to flee into ceramic painting or search for supporting art disciplines. He has remained true to studying the properties of the earth and the effects of firing, and continues to dwell in the sphere of a creator; in the alliance with the four mythical elements: fire, water, earth and air. Skubin’s ceramics is, in short, a lump of soil, torn out of the nature’s breast, shaped by the hand of a rich heir, dried and fired as a sign of creative pluralism in ceramic art. It is in the nucleus of every “multiplication of differences”, especially in arts, that the vitality of ceramics and the hope of postmodernism lie.

* The same happened again in 2003 with his work The Song and in 2007 with his work Apis.

Marina Baričevič Prof.
Member of International Academy of Ceramics, Geneva

With a very simplified form, with a clay plate, seemingly transformed into volume at a single stroke, the idea of the human soul becomes tangible. Beauty lies in simple things and the soul also is simple and straightforward. The sculpture, defying the winds of time like the Nike of Samothrace, symbolizes the soul in its eternal timelessness.

Igor Krmpotič
artist