After his “Return from Africa”, his interest for intercultural practices became stronger and stronger, associating tools, materials, and know-how “aliens” of his ceramic practice.

For example, the relationship between clay and stone enabled him to discover the light contained in the high temperature fired clay which is revealed by polishing, a stonecutter’s technique. The same is true for experimenting with the relationship between glass and clay, which are “cousins” materials, with the relationship between clay and metal or between Clay and concrete, and undoubtedly, others to come. These experiments find their meaning as far as they enable Jacques Kaufmann to deepen the specific properties of clay as a material. Their apparent distancing does not have other goal than better reveal the material, a method borrowed from anthropology, which imposes a distance from the object of its study.

For him, working with clay is not finished by the firing operation but by the configuration of a relationship with space, a supplementary investigation field.

At the same time, Jacques Kaufmann continues in his studio his research of materials’ properties and shaping and realizes works, generally ephemeral, which explore the relationship between a place and a material, which may be bricks, tiles or bulks of ran, clay.

“The way in which form is created is one of the interrogations of my actual work.”

One of my hypotheses is to think that all energy put into a material, first in an intuitive way, then fully structured as one goes along, is the generating principle of the work. In order to achieve this goal, my gestures are simple and accurate and are generated by the material itself. What is at stake is that the form is invented as a concrete experience of a relationship. I find very exciting to have as a starting point objective and almost insignificant realities, apparently void of value and to finally achieve to open an imaginary field for clay or bricks, to feel that I am constructing myself in this perspective. For me, the imaginary is originated in the material，in its qualities and in its poetical energy.