Ipek Kotan is a ceramic artist and designer. Her work is represented in the Boijmans Museum in the Netherlands, Dresden Museum of Decorative Arts and Landshut Museum in Germany and in over 250 private collections worldwide. She's been interviewed by Harper's Bazaar and commissioned by Cartier and Christian Liaigre. Born and raised in Istanbul, she moved to the United States after high school. Since then, she has lived in Indonesia, England, Austria, Switzerland and the Netherlands.

Kotan studied media arts with emphasis on photography at Emerson College in Boston, USA. She later attended Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) in Providence, USA and completed her foundation studies where she explored drawing, painting, ceramics and metal smithing. In 2008 she moved to Stoke-on-Trent, UK and received her master's in ceramics from Staffordshire University in Stoke-on-Trent, UK. In 2010 she established her own studio practice. She is represented by Adrian Sassoon in London, Zetterquist Galleries in New York, Pucker Gallery in Boston, Jeffrey Spahn in San Francisco and Portakal in Istanbul.

Ipek is the first and only artist to complete a year-long residency at the European Ceramic Work Center in the Netherlands, also known as sundaymorning @ ekwc, a residency whose past residents include artists such as Anish Kapoor, Antony Gormly and Betty Woodman. Her work has been reviewed by renowned ceramic art critic Walter Lokau, former Christie's senior director, interior designer Richard Rabel, published in art publications such as Ceramic Review, New Ceramics, Art Aurea and popular magazines such as Harper's Bazaar as Elle Decor.

Her work stems from a visceral need to create objects with her hands using natural materials and a love of the sculptural vessel form. The vessel being one of the oldest objects ever made and one of the most commonly found in archeological sites the world over, to her it's an embodiment of the timelessness, endurance and the universality of the human experience.

Kotan is interested in what this form represents metaphysically and uses it as a canvas and a frame in which she explores modern and minimalist expressions. She keeps the exteriors of forms simple, like a frame, in which she brings out complex textures and colors so that together with the form they can radiate a calm and soothing energy.

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