Ron Nagle: Peripheral Cognition / San Diego Museum of Art November 1, 2014 - February 17, 2015
Nagle is an internationally acclaimed ceramicist and sculptor. Influenced and inspired by fearless pioneers such as Peter Voulkos and Ken Price, he is considered among the foremost Abstract Expressionist ceramicists. Also known for his career as a singer/songwriter, Nagle’s work was among the highlights of The New Museum’s artistic director, Massimiliano Gioni’s exhibition at the 2013 Venice Biennale.
In San Diego, curated by Ariel Plotek, Associate Curator of Modern Art, Nagle’s ceramic works will be displayed in long cases alongside a selection of preparatory sketches. Featuring notable works such as Lobster Boy and Car Bomb, the exhibition showcases 19 ceramic sculptures and 11 drawings. The show’s title Peripheral Cognition calls attention to “peripheral points of departure,” or the stream of conscious state of mind that comes while creating.
With an architect’s attention to detail and a graffiti artist’s irreverence, Nagle has been forming small objects mostly out of clay for the past 50 years. Although relatively small in size, his ceramic sculptures are big on beauty. Initially referencing ceramic vessels, his work has evolved to forms that are less referential to pottery yet still maintain certain ceramic elements. With a quintessentially Californian aesthetic, Nagle’s signature style is funky yet unfailingly sophisticated. Each form Nagle shapes acquires multiple meanings, wrapped in a riddle of puns and allusions often referenced in their titles.
“Ron Nagle was inventing Post-Modernism years before it became fashionable. He was part of the California revolution in American pottery that took place in the 1960s,” says Roxana Velásquez, Maruja Baldwin Executive Director at The San Diego Museum of Art. “We’re honored to host the artist’s first major solo museum exhibition. With the addition of Ron Nagle: Peripheral Cognition, we’re able to further showcase the Museum’s interest in contemporary art.”
Funding for the presentation of the exhibition, Ron Nagle: Peripheral Cognition, in San Diego, has been provided by RBC Wealth Management, The San Diego Museum of Art’s Contemporary Arts Committee, the Members of The San Diego Museum of Art, and the County of San Diego Community Enhancement Program. Institutional support for the Museum is provided by the City of San Diego Commission for Arts and Culture.
Museum hours: Monday through Tuesday and Thursday through Saturday, 10am - 5pm; Sunday, 12pm - 5pm.
Arcangelo. Creating body, creating place / Officine Saffi, Milan February 19 - March 28, 2015
Officine Saffi presents a solo show by Arcangelo (b. 1956, Avellino), one of the best-known Italian ceramic artists, originating from the Campania region. Curated by Laura Borghi, the exhibition comprises twelve new works in ceramic specially made at the Officine Saffi Lab, in an interesting convergence between the creative and exhibition spheres.
The new series of works made by Arcangelo in the Milanese “factory” is titled Le Case degli Irpini (Homes in Irpinia), the natural development of a process of reflection on materials and the concept of tradition conducted by the artist from the 1980s. Arcangelo adopts cultures both near and far, utilizing imagery of the house as a fetish, a symbolic casket encasing affection and intimacy.
The points of reference for these works are the archaic cultures of pre-Roman Italy, as for the Sanniti series, but also the most ancient and mysterious populations of Africa, as was the case of the project on the Dogon. And so the Homes in Irpinia become idealized, shared homes, outside the realms of time and space, with references to a land that is at once a material to be shaped, and a maternal, almost uterine image.
Arcangelo is an artist who works with both pictorial and sculptural media. He first encountered sculpture in the 1980s, taking courses with Ernesto Rossetti at the Fine Arts Academy in Rome where he completed his diploma with Emilio Greco. In Rome he frequented academic circles and masters of Italian sculpture, and he felt artistic affinities with figures such as Neapolitan sculptor Augusto Perez, but also with pictorial currents by the new generation of artists.
It was in those years that works such as Coltivazione di granturco (Maize growing) or the Altari (Altars) took form, revealing his preference for conceiving a location’s specific identity and the sacral aura of the forms that he manipulated. The same sort of sacred aura could be perceived in works made in the 1990s, the Montagne sante (Holy Mountains) and the Miracoli (Miracles), in a sequence that continued right through to the early 21st century with his Anfore (Amphorae) and Orti (Gardens).
Installation view of Arcangelo. Fare corpo, fare luogo exhibition, 2015. Copyright Officine Saffi. Photo by Alessandra Vinci.
Other significant landmarks in Arcangelo’s oeuvre include exhibitions such as Sarcofago, anfore, tappeti persiani (Sarcophagi, amphorae, Persian carpets) at Galleria Lorenzelli in 2000, and Da terra mia (From my land) at Marcorossi Artecontemporanea in 2013, in particular as regards the relationship between sculptural forms and pictorial surfaces.
“In this recent series of pieces,” writes Flaminio Gualdoni, “Arcangelo is truly engaged in the creation of body, along with the creation of a location. His material is solid colour, rough and physically assertive, impregnated and encrusted with layers of additional colour, as in a sensitive amplification and a subtle contradiction. Thirty years ago his works were titled ‘Terra mia’ (My land, my earth). Today, the anthropological and biographical concept of earth is wholly implied by this material, and in the powerful sense of meaning emanating from the bodies derived from it.”
Gallery hours: Monday through Friday, 10 am - 6.30 pm. Saturday, 11 am - 60 pm. Sunday by appointment.
Artist’s Reception: Wednesday, March 4th, at 5:30 pm.
With Battle, Lahti arrives at a place in her work where two long-standing and concurrent practices of collage and ceramic sculpture have come together with tremendous effect and power.
The pieces in the exhibition continue the work Lahti began in 2012 at the Zentrum für Keramik, Berlin where she started to incorporate found images on paper directly into the bodies of her figurative ceramics. The introduction of the paper adds an element of fragility, while also referring to art historical uses of found objects and materials by artists associated with Dada and Surrealism. Equally, the ceramic elements bear their own references to ceramic traditions in the history of art and craft.
At the heart of these works is the potential of each material to evoke a different emotional response on a full spectrum of tensions and resonances.
“Throughout my artistic career I have honed my technical skills and sensitivity to materials, and I am currently exploring the way various materials affect the conceptual intent and impact of each piece. These pieces combine paper with paper and paper with sculpted ceramic components. The source materials for elements include old books, documentary photographs of the circus, party ephemera, figurative sculptures from antiquity, and mass-produced figurines of the industrial era. The materials are altered, manipulated, and combined in a process that becomes an obvious and integral part of the completed piece. The paper introduces an element of fragility, while also referring to art historical uses of “found” objects and materials by artists associated with Dada and Surrealism. I was equally interested in using paper sculpturally, in a naïve and childlike way that complements and contrasts with the ceramic elements. At the heart of these works is the potential of each material to evoke a different emotional response, on a full spectrum of tensions and resonances.
In the Spring of 2014 I learned of the theory of carnivalization. I was delighted to find how well it fit with my current body of work. The theory was developed by the Russian linguist Mikhail Bakhtin in his works Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics (1929) and Rabelais and his World (1965). Bakhtin argued that the overturning of hierarchies in popular carnival—its mingling of the sacred with the profane, the sublime with the ridiculous lies behind the most ‘open’ literary genres. Carnivalized literary forms allow alternative voices to dethrone the authority of official culture.
Although Bakhtin was focusing his theory on literary works, I found his thoughts encompassed many of the ideas contained in my artworks; the sculptures, collages and books included in my exhibition Battle embody these theories of carnivalization. They subvert and liberate the assumptions of the dominant style or atmosphere through humor and chaos, containing the relativity of joy that subverts. Each artwork weds and combines the sacred with the profane, the wise with the stupid and the beautiful with the grotesque. The jolly relativity of all things is proclaimed by alternative voices within the carnivalized images and sculptures. They challenge the authoritative voice of the hegemony through their mingling of high culture with the profane.” Cynthia Lahti
Cynthia Lahti received her BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design. Her work has been featured in Portland2012: A Biennial of Contemporary Art, at the Portland Art Museum in the Schnitzer Center For Northwest Art and at the Schneider Museum of Art. Lahti’s work is held in the collections of Reed College, the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art and the Boise Art Museum. She was an artist-in-residence at the Zentrum für Keramik in Berlin in the fall of 2012. In 2013, she was the recipient of a Hallie Ford Fellowship from the Ford Family Foundation. Lahti lives and works in Portland, OR.
Gallery hours: Tuesday through Saturday, 11 am - 6 pm.
Tsubo: The Art of The Vessel / Joan B Mirviss, New York March 13 - April 24, 2015
With its unparalleled and unbroken history in ceramics, Japan continues to lead the world in the important field of contemporary clay art. In tribute to this accomplishment, Joan B. Mirviss is proud to present an important exhibition,Tsubo: The Art of the Vessel, organized in collaboration with the leading modern ceramic dealer in Japan, Shibuya Kuradatoen Co., LTD and timed to open for the start of 2015 Asia Week New York. This seminal exhibition focuses on the classical concept of the tsubo, literally, the storage jar, chronicling its uninterrupted history from ancient to modern times, and examining its role in shaping the greater ceramic narrative of Japan and clay art the world over.
The way in which the Japanese have approached and appreciated tsubo through history has been rather unique and special. Japanese poets, critics, collectors and scholars have referred to tsubo as works to be fondled and stroked, often identifying themselves with these seductive vessels to the point of losing themselves to their inner world. Descriptions of these vessels are pervasive throughout Japanese literature and history and contain now well-known poetic allusions. Admired through the centuries, these works have become widely treasured and acquired by collectors and museums both in Japan and abroad.
With works extending from Neolithic times, into 15th and 16th century medieval storage jars and through the 20th century, this exhibition will include over forty important clay vessels. Both glazed and unglazed, mineral-rich stoneware tsubo from many of the ancient kiln sites will be presented–– Bizen, Karatsu, Seto, Shigaraki, and Tamba. Porcelain vessels with delicate celadon, oil-spot, and blue-and-white, glazes and those formed with marbleized clay will provide insights into the important role that Chinese ceramics played in developments in Japan. Beyond the ancient and antique vessels, highlights will include daring forms by past master artists Kamoda Shôji (1933-83), Kawai Kanjirô (1890-1966), Kondô Yûzô (1902-85), Matsui Kôsei (1927-2003), Kitaôji Rosanjin (1883-1959), Okabe Mineo (1919-90), and Yagi Kazuo (1918-79) in addition to modern interpretations by current leading ceramic stars Kakurezaki Ryûichi (b. 1950), Mihara Ken (b. 1958), Mori Tôgaku (b. 1937) and Tsujimura Shirô (b. 1947).
Gallery hours: Monday through Friday, 11 am to 6 pm.
Contact info@mirviss.com 212-799-4021
Joan B Mirviss Ltd. 39 East 78th Street, 4th floor New York, NY 10075 United States
Above: Mihara Ken (b. 1958), Multi-fired vessel with cinched waist, horizontal score at center and surface colorations in orange and green, 2012, Multi-fired unglazed stoneware, 14 x 13 7/8 x 9 1/4 in.
Artigas, Chapallaz, de Montmollin: Bards of Enamels / Musée Ariana, Geneva February 4 - May 31, 2015
Combining in a single exhibition works by the Catalan Josep Llorens Artigas (1892-1980), the Swiss ceramists Édouard Chapallaz (b.1921) and Brother Daniel de Montmollin (b.1921) – active within the Taizé religious community in Burgundy – is not purely random. These three artists, who have each in their own way left their mark on contemporary European ceramics, have continuously enhanced their understanding of enamels throughout their careers, knowledge that all three have been keen to pass on through their teaching, publications and more generally by their openness and their availability towards colleagues.
Creating unique wheel-turned pieces, mostly with simple, pure lines, all three have endeavoured to sublimate these forms by clothing them, like a skin intimately fused to the clay, with enamels of infinite variety and depth. Bright or muted, matt or gloss, single or superimposed, fired in reduction or oxidation atmospheres, the enamels have an eloquence that is never, with these highly experienced masters, the result of chance. Fire certainly plays a major role and can sometimes have surprises in store, but it is mainly through knowledge, practice and experience – “a kiln without tests is a wasted kiln” said Artigas – the fruit of many years of hard work, that they have acquired over time a remarkable command of their art. All three mention the same source of inspiration: Chinese stoneware and porcelain. “Oxblood” “hare’s fur”, “oil spot” and celadon, the sensuality of Far Eastern enamels and glazes and their moving poetic names are a source of fascination and stimulation; they provide the model.
Despite these apparent parallels, the three ceramists have each followed their own path. Artigas placed his vast savoir-faire at the service of artists like Joan Miró and Raoul Dufy, while continuing his production of slender vases in delicate tones; Chapallaz, with his sound technical experience gained in industry, developed a personal approach notably through his interest in ceramic walls incorporated into architecture; de Montmollin, whose vocation as a potter is enriched by a spiritual dimension, has built up a near encyclopaedic knowledge of ash glazes, tirelessly scouring the surrounding countryside for raw materials.
Eminently respectful of their colleagues’ work without being very close, the three artists have met on several occasions. De Montmollin gladly went to Gallifa when in Spain. He remembers the delicious meals prepared on these occasions by Artigas’ Genevan wife. Artigas, for his part, enjoyed drinking tea at the Chapallaz’s home on visits to Switzerland. Through the intermediary of Philippe Lambercy, Chapallaz and de Montmollin met on several occasions.
Although enamelled ceramics did go temporarily out of fashion at the turn of the 21st century, being supplanted by bare clay and raw textures, it would appear that this type of coating is enjoying renewed interest today among young ceramists. The timeless enamelled vase, in all its simplicity and sophistication, has been more than sufficient for our three ceramists as a field of exploration to sustain a long career. The Musée Ariana’s collection, thanks in particular to gifts by the collectors Charles and Isabelle Roth and Csaba Gaspar, contains a significant ensemble of work by Édouard Chapallaz (169 pieces) and owing to a very generous recent donation by Brother Daniel de Montmollin, the body of work by this artist now numbers 39 items. As regards Josep Llorens Artigas, we have drawn on loans from Genevan private collections, given that the museum’s holdings only include three ceramics from his studio.
Museum hours: Tuesday through Sunday, 10am - 6pm.
Contact ariana@ville-ge.ch +41 22 418 54 50
Musée Ariana Musée suisse de la céramique et du verre 10 Avenue de la Paix CH-1202 Geneva Switzerland
Above: Edouard Chapallaz, Vase, 1993, Grès, émail marbré, H. 22 cm. Collection Musée Ariana. Photo by Nicolas Lieber.
Carol Gouthro and Jim Kraft / Gallery IMA, Seattle March 5-28, 2015
Gallery IMA is pleased to showcase artwork by Pacific Northwest artists Carol Gouthro and Jim Kraft in an exploration of ceramics as a medium of vessels. An introduction of the Aurlia series of sculptures by artist Carol Gouthro, she evokes allusions of botanical illustrations through the incorporation of vibrant colors and a hybrid of biological forms.
Carol Gouthro focuses the basis “of her work on the ceramic vessel in its variable forms as a container. In the last decade her work has evolved in her explorations of botanically inspired hybrid sculptural forms. She combines her experiences abroad in India and China and carries elements of these cultural experiences. Carol states “I am fascinated by the complexity, diversity, beauty, and danger of the natural world and this leads to thoughts about growth, nourishment, attraction, and sexuality… After many years of closely observing and collecting plants, and constructing vessel forms that transformed into plant forms, I began inventing my own plant species using botanical nomenclature as my departure point.”
Jim Kraft opens a discussion on the fabrication of vessels as a combination of a series of elements. An amalgamation of coil and brick shaped pieces combine themselves to form a greater structure. The use of earth toned earthenware clay results in a distinctive, highly textural sculpture. He describes the processes behind his work as “… the act of making the work, connects me with past cultures who used the same materials to make vessels for ceremony or everyday use. I like the idea of being a part of the long history of people making things with their hands.”
Carol Gouthro and Jim Kraft’s artwork have been exhibited nationally and internationally.
Gallery hours: Tuesday through Saturday, 10:30 am - 5:30 pm, and by appointment.
Contact info@galleryima.com 206-625-0055
Gallery IMA 123 South Jackson Street Seattle, WA 98104 United States
Above: Jim Kraft, Cord, Cylinder, 2013, Earthenware clay, 26 x 13 x 13 inches. Photo by Richard Nicol.
Betty Woodman, Balustrade Vase 95-13, 1995, Ceramic, 26 x 26 x 3 in. Courtesy of Jeffrey Spahn Gallery, Berkeley, CA. Photo by Jan Blair.
Brie Ruais, 21 Ways to Enter and Exit the Studio on December 21st 2012, 2013, Pigmented and glazed ceramic, hardware, 64 x 99 x 2 in. Courtesy of Marc Selwyn Fine Art. Photo by Chris Burke.
Betty Woodman, Beauties of April, May, and June, 2000, Ceramic, 60 x 35 x 7.5 in. Courtesy of John and Stacy Rubeli, Los Angeles, CA. Photo by Susan Einstein.
Nicole Cherubini, Little Susie, 2012, Pine, earthenware, terra-cotta, glaze, MDF, oil paint, acrylic, 73 x 29 x 14 in. Courtesy of the artist and Tracy Williams, Ltd. Photo by Jason Mandela.
Anton Reijnders, Stack 10b, 2009, Fired clay, unfired clay, glaze, engobe and tea cloth, 12 x 12 x 8 in. Courtesy of the artist. Photo by Anton Reijnders.
Jessica Hans, Cucumber Vase at Falls Road, 2011, Digital C-Print, 20 x 14 in. Courtesy of the artist. Photo by Jessica Hans.
Jun Kaneko, Untitled, Construction, 2014, Hand-built and glazed ceramics, 10.5 x 19 x 8.25 in. Courtesy of Jun Kaneko Studio. Photo by Colin Conces.
Anton Reijnders, Nomen nescio 122, 2003, Fired clay, terra sigillata, pillow, and tea cloth, 9 x 28.5 x 24.5 in. Courtesy of the artist. Photo by Anton Reijnders.
The 71st Scripps College Ceramic Annual at Ruth Chandler Williamson Gallery, Scripps College, Claremont, CA January 24 - April 5, 2015
The third issue of Ceramics Now Magazine is out in June 2015, after a two-year hiatus.
We have put a lot of work into it in the past eight months, and we are confident that the result will be exceptional. The issue features 34 in-depth interviews with world-renowned and emerging artists and includes articles by Rachel Dickson, Erez Mayaan, Lilianne Milgrom, Debra Sloan, and Laetitia Wilson.
With its elegant layout, thoughtful interviews, and compelling feature articles, the journal will invite us to think about the various facets of contemporary ceramics and its creators.
The journal is published independently twice a year, with 100+ pages perfect bound in full color and printed on quality paper with a matte cover. It is also available in digital format, to enjoy reading on your desktop, tablet, or phone.
Please reach us out at office@ceramicsnow.org if you have any questions.
Ceramics Now is a small, non-profit organization kept alive by the passion and devotion of our readers. We would like to thank them for their support and trust.
Federica Schiavo Gallery is delighted to present Stige, Francesco Ardini’s first solo show at the gallery.
“I looked at its white mantle flowing upon the flat banks as I moulded it. I heard its voice, a slow melody, eternal. Silent, like time itself. This song, enchanted me.”
The work of Francesco Ardini has always been punctuated by a rich metamorphic and mythological theme which becomes, in his first solo exhibition in Rome, a revaluation on the origins of his actions as an artist. Drier and indeed more concise than his first projects, Stige is developed in the artist’s imagination as a kind of situationism, at first topographic and then formal, gutted by a long meditation on the location of his workplace. Nove and Bassano del Grappa are two towns located in a small region in the northeast of Italy, crossed by the river Medoacus, as the ancient called it – nowadays the Brenta river – on whose banks, at the beginning of the 17th century, a small community gathered in order to work the clay on behalf of the Venetian Republic. The language of the artist is marked by the strong relationship with that tradition, the memory of an ancient culture, a grand universe which stood still and towards which the artist directs his bow to erect his funerary monuments.
The Manufatti Fossili (Fossil Artefacts) in the first room, are full masses, gips bodies agglomerated into forms, stacked and then sliced. The necroscopic act reveals, on top of the shapes inside the moulds, Ardini’s will to transform what remains into an archaeological artefact, like surfacing traces drifting in the current. This progression reveals an entropic approach towards matter; ceramic evokes now a distant memory almost entirely abandoned in order to welcome the sculptural forms as only leisure of the creative complexity. A mutation occurs leading to sharing in the volumes, aspects of the figurative as well as of its boundary.
Deployed in the other rooms through the gallery, the exhibition continues with the crystallisation of a process through forms and locations, situations that dramatise the evanescent spirit of the existence and even of matter itself. Vision becomes more intimate; here, once more, the artist alters all circumstances, the shape of a limb breaks apart, disjointed from its figure, it is moulded into a single body along with other objects collected from handicraft workshops, like chairs or tables.
Every artwork is given an anthropomorphic character; the pink chrome is a reminder of the flesh, the unfolding drapery onto the table draws traces of skin. Like human remains, the whole body of work projects a scenery of ghostly presences, desolate in space, emanating the shadow of a distant past. Stige, like the river Styx, flows like that white river. The eye of the artist is filled with judgement towards what history has left him: a cry, silent like time itself.
Text by Geraldine Blais Zodo. Translation by Filippo De Francesco.
Francesco Ardini was born in Padua, Italy, in 1986. He lives and works between Padua and Nove. He received his degree in Architecture with a speciality in Architecture of Landscape in 2011 from the IUAV University in Venice, Italy.
Above: Francesco Ardini, Francesco, 2014, “Terraglia” and grès, oxides and semi-matt crystalline, wooden chair, rubben lace, 106 x 39 x 44 cm. Photo by Giorgio Benni. Courtesy Federica Schiavo Gallery, Rome.
Kristina Riska: New Work at Hostler Burrows, New York May 7 - June 5, 2015
Hostler Burrows is pleased to announce an exhibition of new work by the artist Kristina Riska. For her first solo show in the United States, nearly a dozen new pieces are on display, including both Riska’s large scale vessels and smaller ceramic objets d'art.
Kristina Riska is a Finnish artist who has been exploring, defying and redefining the traditional tenets of ceramic sculpture since the 1980s. Her unorthodox, large scale stoneware and artworks, which are inspired by nature and the properties of light and shadow, embody her rigorous, physical approach to her work.
New Work investigates Riska’s latest experimentations with clay that largely reflect her process, history and working environment. They are elaborate pieces imbued with a physical and emotional depth, which are the underpinnings of her spontaneous working method.
Riska describes her process as a foray into the unknown, and that with each unplanned, instinctive manipulation of the clay she also establishes a non-physical “internal space.” She describes this space as a repository for her qualities of quietude, serenity and concentration, and also for a very specific memory of the interplay of light and shade cast upon her from the bars of her childhood cot. In an interview with Rae Verkkoranta from the Embassy of Finland in Brussels Riska discusses this process of transference: “… out of all the thoughts that I have had, every touch of the hand, all the ambient sound… these things [sic] latch onto the work,” giving each piece in the exhibition the intangible quality of her own history.
The ethereal, elusive qualities of Riska’s pieces also reflect her ideals of sustainability. She meticulously avoids the superfluous and works with a precision that conveys a striking effect with seemingly very little material.
New Work exemplifies how Riska pushes the boundaries of both her medium and herself. Her latest undertaking has yielded fresh and sincere sculptures, impressive for their dynamism, a quality that permeates Riska’s personality, her physical methods, and the objects themselves.
Riska is a graduate of the Department of Ceramic Art at the University of Art and Design, Finland. She is the recipient of numerous awards including the State of Finland’s Suomi Prize in 1995, the Medaglia D'oro in Faenza Italy in 1995, a silver medal at the International Ceramic Contest in Mino, Japan in 2002, and also working grants from both The State of Finland and The Finnish Cultural Foundation. Riska’s works are part of various public and private collections, including The Design Museum Helsinki, The Saastamoninen Foundation, the Ulster Museum in Belfast Ireland, and the Gifu Museum in Japan.
Gallery Hours: Monday to Friday, 11am - 6pm.
Contact info@hostlerburrows.com 212 343 0471
Hostler Burrows 51 E. 10th Street New York, NY 10003 United States
Above: Kristina Riska, Bodypart White, 2015, Handbuilt stoneware and white slip, 140 x 30 cm. Photo by Chikako Harada.
A Moment in Time: Akiyama Yō and Kitamura Junko at Joan B Mirviss, New York April 27 - May 29, 2015
Joan B Mirviss LTD is thrilled to present the first US joint-exhibition of critically acclaimed clay artists Akiyama Yō and Kitamura Junko. Featuring twenty dynamic works ranging from delicately inlaid vessels to large-scale sculptural abstractions, this important exhibition highlights the decidedly different yet equally compelling styles of the celebrated Kyoto-based artistic couple. This showing explores each artist’s response to the primary and tactile connotations of clay as a medium and examine their mutual considerations on destruction, renewal and metamorphosis.
A dominating force in Japanese contemporary art, Akiyama Yō (b 1953) continues to gain global recognition for his powerful sculptural works manifested through a passionate engagement with the physicality of clay. Few artists have done more in recent years to bring contemporary Japanese ceramic arts to global attention. His signature unglazed, fractured forms have established him at the forefront of international contemporary sculpture through sold-out solo exhibitions and museum acquisitions spanning East to West.
“Akiyama’s ceramic creations allude to the transformations that have sculpted the earth.” (Robert Mintz, Chief Curator and Curator of Asian Art, Walters Art Museum, 2014)
Returning to Joan B Mirviss for a third time following his sold-out solo exhibitions in 2011 and 2007, Akiyama presents new works of varying scale created specifically for this show. These powerful unglazed stoneware forms, imbedded with iron filings, appear as if extracted from the earth’s core. Evoking windswept rock or cooled magma, Akiyama’s unique surface treatments seem to capture forms as if in a perpetual state of destruction and regeneration, leading viewers on a visual journey from the beginning of the earth through the end of time.
Akiyama Yō’s works grace many important collections and museums around the world, including: Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide, Australia; Faenza International Ceramic Museum, Italy; Musée national de Céramique de Sèvres, France; National Museums of Modern Art, Kyoto and Tokyo; Museum, Honolulu; Minneapolis Institute of Arts; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Suntory Museum of Art, Tokyo; and Victoria & Albert Museum, London. He currently serves as the chairman of the prestigious ceramics department at Kyoto City University of Arts.
A key figure in an artistic sphere that is increasingly assuming center stage, Kitamura Junko (b 1956), like fellow pioneering female Japanese ceramicists Koike Shōko, Katsumata Chieko, and Ogawa Machiko, creates conceptually daring works far beyond traditional ties to functionality. Part of two groundbreaking US exhibitions on Japanese ceramics, Contemporary Ceramics for the New Century in 2005 at the MFA Boston and 2009’s Smith College Museum of Fine Art’s celebrated, Touch Fire: Contemporary Ceramics by Women Artists, Kitamura has solidified her standing among the leaders of contemporary clay art.
Presented in a range of dramatic new profiles, works in this exhibition feature Kitamura’s signature, intricate lace-like patterns that appear to arise and break away in rippling, wave-like designs in white slip inlay juxtaposed against a dark, matte, black slip-covered body. These miniscule concentric dots and geometric punchings meld together with adjoining configurations to make intricate designs suggesting textile patterns, snowflakes or celestial constellations.
“(Kitamura’s) tiny stamped motifs accumulate to form clusters and as they repeat—perhaps already hinting at a specific design. They eventually lose their regularity and dissolve into a kind of froth, an organic flux from which the overall pattern emerges.” (Soaring Voices, Contemporary Japanese Ceramic Artists, Shigaraki Museum of Contemporary Ceramic Art, 2007)
Kitamura Junko’s works have been featured in solo and group exhibitions across the globe and are in the permanent collections of: British Museum, London; Brooklyn Museum; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Museum of Kyoto; National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo; and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery Smithsonian, Washington DC, among many others.
Above: (first image) Akiyama Yō, Untitled MV-151, 2015, Unglazed stoneware fired in a cool reduction atmosphere, 11 ¾ x 16 x 14 ¾ inches / 30 x 41 x 37.5 cm. Photo by Fukunaga Kazuo. (second image) Kitamura Junko, Vessel 15-A, 2015, Stoneware with black slip and white slip inlay, 9 ¾ x 16 ½ x 16 ½ inches / 25 x 42 x 42 cm. Photo by Fukunaga Kazuo.
Rupert Spira holds a unique place in the development of contemporary ceramics. This major retrospective brings together outstanding pieces from every stage of Spira’s career, largely drawn from his own collection.
James Fordham, Director of Oxford Ceramics, says, “We are delighted to be staging this important exhibition, which charts the evolution of Rupert Spira’s work from his early tableware to his superb poem bowls - arguably the culmination of his career as a ceramic artist. A few years ago Spira turned his full attention to writing and speaking about the philosophy of non-duality, so this is likely to be his last solo show. We are honoured to be hosting it.“
Rupert Spira is among the finest ceramists of his generation, known for his elegant tableware, his undulating open bowls, his eloquent groupings of slender cylinder vessels and his unique poem bowls. His work is simple and strong in form, quiet and restrained in character. His glazes range from matt white to a vivid Chun blue and a rich copper red, and he is a master of sgraffito.
His first brush with studio pottery was a Michael Cardew exhibition in 1975. He later recalled, "Cardew’s pots had a raw, vital, organic quality I’d never seen before. What struck me was their potency, their capacity to communicate.” He went on to train under Cardew for two years before setting up his own studio and establishing his own distinctive style, but the desire to communicate remained central to his work.
In the late 1990s Spira began to introduce words to his ceramics - poetry, often his own - painstakingly incised or embossed. At times the words are indistinct, their meaning elusive; elsewhere they are clear and precise. They add a different dimension to our reading of the pots and have a serene, almost meditative quality.
Spira was active as a potter for more than 30 years, during which time he achieved international renown. His work can be found in private and public collections throughout the world, including the V&A, the Fitzwilliam Museum, the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts and the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo.
The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue with essays by Caroline Seymour and Rupert Spira.
Gallery Hours: Wednesday to Saturday, 10am to 5.30pm, and by appointment.
Malcolm Mobutu Smith: Mutations at Luise Ross Gallery, New York April 18 - May 30, 2015
From an early interest in art and continuing with obtaining an MFA from the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University, Malcolm Mobutu Smith’s passion for sculpture has a distinct mixture of elegance and whimsy, turning the utilitarian into the sublime.
In Smith’s first exhibition at Luise Ross Gallery in New York, the vessel form is a starting point to create the sculpture, and at the same time transcends its functional uses. A ceramic rope nearly strangles the neck of a bulbous bottomed bottle form entitled Gmirr. Moonshore Cloud and Blackcloud Cup are inspired by cloud transformations. These sculptures with precise yet fluid forms and multiple glazes illustrate Smith’s technical mastery while presenting an artistic vision beyond that of creating a beautiful vessel.
Smith’s seventeen ceramic sculptures in the exhibition are imbued with an undulating high energy. Their sensual fluidity takes on a figural quality as if a person is about to unfold and walk out of the sculpture. This can best be seen in works like Turvin. Rich earth tones curl and snake up the vessel form, culminating in a brilliant gold lip. As in all the work the figure is strongly hinted at in the sculptural curves and folds, but never fully delineated. The implication is that the figure would appear clearly if the viewer could just find the right angle. Ambiguity and playfulness are two of Smith’s great strengths.
Inspired by the energy of jazz, graffiti, and popular culture, Smith’s sculptures retain a feeling of improvisation and the ephemeral. As in Candeed, he combines an elegant mint green glaze with three-dimensional stylized glyphs, mimicking the ebb and flow of language and music. Perhaps given the influence of graffiti art in his practice it is not surprising that an artistic interest is the appropriation of territory, in this case, that claimed by craft, being reclaimed for art.
Orko from 2008, the earliest sculpture in the exhibition, combines many of Smith’s fascinations. He considers this a vessel form, nonfunctional though it may be. It contains the figural quality prominent throughout his work. Its base seems human, with an arm stretching out. It also embodies more graphic influences as seen in the vivid color and gold arrow that might be at home on a spray-painted wall.
Integrating a myriad of textural qualities, an unconventionally beautiful color palette, with undulating vessel forms, Smith plays with the relationship between two and three-dimensional space. He draws on the rich history of the ceramic craft while perpetually looking for ways to transcend its limits. In this, Smith’s first exhibition at Luise Ross Gallery, he succeeds.
Gallery Hours: Tuesday to Saturday, 10am - 6pm.
Contact 212 343 2161 lrossgallery@earthlink.net
Luise Ross Gallery 547 West 27 Street #504 New York, NY 10001 United States
Above: Malcolm Mobutu Smith, Turvin, 2013, Stoneware, slip and glaze, 10 x 5.5 x 5.5 inches. Courtesy of Luise Ross Gallery, New York.
Atsushi Takagaki: Into the Deep / Yufuku Gallery, Tokyo October 30 - November 8, 2014
Technique is merely a means to an end. The end? The manifestation of the sublime—a beauty that can stand the tests of time and has the power to move, no matter the age, heritage, or creed. Celadon artist Atsushi Takagaki has effectively eschewed 40 years of research and artistry in the realm of celadon to strive for new vistas in black stoneware. With great courage, into the deep.
For centuries, celadon was considered the most difficult of ceramic styles to master, in part due to the adversities imposed by the fickleness of celadon glaze. In fact, Takagaki makes approx. 80 different batches of celadon glaze to use for a single piece, as the slightest variation in kiln and room temperatures, humidity or other factors will destroy the purity of the glaze and ruin an entire work. Celadon requires numerous coats of glaze that are applied with the utmost care, layer by layer. For this reason, different glazes are needed for different stages in glazing, and each coat must be perfectly balanced or else the subtle hues will be skewed.
Takagaki’s recent works are the culmination of his glazing techniques, in that he has invented an innovative new way to have two different coats of celadon glaze co-exist within a single piece - one glaze is traditional, while the other features hints of scarlet. This sublimely original glazing, combined with his minimal, angular forms, places Takagaki in a far different aesthetic plane than his contemporaries.
Originally conceived by imperial craftsmen for the delectation of kings and emperors, celadon is a legendary and historic form of glazed stoneware widely considered by critics and connoisseurs to be one of the great treasures of Chinese civilization. The artistry behind the notoriously difficult celadon glazing remains with us today in the likes of skilled contemporary artists such as Atsushi Takagaki (b. 1946). Yet unlike the masters of old, Takagaki has rejuvenated the style with his many experiments into unlocking the mysteries of celadon glazing, allowing the artist to create sparkling yet subtle scarlet hues buried within serene seas of celadon green.
Wielding original, asymmetrical forms that directly confront the almost mechanical execution of medieval celadon, the stature of Takagaki as a celadon artist has grown exponentially in the past several years, in part due to his receiving the Award of Excellence at the Asahi Ceramics Exhibition in 2005 and at the 2nd Kikuchi Biennale in 2007.
Gallery hours: Tuesday through Saturday, 11am – 6pm. Final day closes at 4 pm.
Contact E: gallery@yufuku.net T: 81-3-5411-2900
Yufuku Gallery Annecy Aoyama 1F 2-6-12 Minami-Aoyama Minato-ku, Tokyo 107-0062 Japan
Above: Atsushi Takagaki, Genkaku (The Depths), 2014, Stoneware, red and black slip, celadon glaze, 23.5 x 14 x 44 cm.
