Abraham Kritzman & Daniel Silver: Choir is on view at Elizabeth Xi Bauer, London

February 2 – March 30, 2024

Elizabeth Xi Bauer is thrilled to present Choir, a duo exhibition of works by Daniel Silver and Abraham Kritzman. This will be the first time that Silver’s work will be displayed at Elizabeth Xi Bauer Gallery, and the first time both artists exhibit together, evidencing mutual interests, themes, and use of materials in their respective practices.

Abraham Kritzman’s work is an ongoing investigation into notions of man-made – from paintings and sculptures to architecture and landscape. Kritzman’s multidisciplinary production is often influenced by mythical narratives and perennial imagery. His technique is analogous to a dance, where he moves back and forward, adds and removes: symbols, layers of paint and three-dimensional matter, thus creating meanings through paths that are seldom linear. For this upcoming exhibition, Kritzman will exhibit large paintings displayed within painted black box-like structures, creating a looming presence within the Gallery space. These will be accompanied by bronze reliefs which he created in the South London-based Foundry Make Touch, run by artist Katrin Hanusch. Each unique bronze sculpture is patinated by Kritzman and will be installed on the Gallery walls. Both these series delve into the language that the artist has developed over the years, influenced by his travels around the world as well as his personal experiences of everyday life.

Kritzman’s large-scale relief-like paintings bring together a menagerie of images, characters, and figures that merge in a thick layer of paint. To begin creating this body of work, he first adds a base colour as an underlayer. Copious amounts of oil paint are then applied on top of this underlayer, with the colour choice varying for each work. Layers are revealed underneath the wet paint as Kritzman oscillates through various thicknesses in a scoring process, producing intricate patterns and allowing larger areas to expose the underneath painting to a fuller extent. By the nature of paint drying, there is only a finite amount of time for the composition to be created before the window which enables the process begins to close.

Since his artistic debut in the late 1990s, Daniel Silver has shaped an artistic style that is distinctively recognisable as his own. Writer Gilda Williams described in a 2007 article for Art Forum, “Much of London-based sculptor Daniel Silver’s work occupies an in-between state — between complete and incomplete, between handmade and mass-produced, between artistic object and castoff”.

During a visit to the Italian marble quarry city of Carrara in 2007, Silver encountered discarded copies of Greco-Roman statuary, which he appropriated and carved into. These repurposed sculptures were then displayed on roughened wooden plinths, re-evaluating their worth, originality, and the transformation of an object from an artefact into an artwork. Silver continues to evolve his practice, exploring works on paper he participated in the 2019 Drawing Biennale in London. The latest chapter of his sculptural production incorporates the medium of clay. Recent works of unglazed clay painted over in oil paints have allowed him to further explore notions of psychoanalytic theory, human anatomy, and memory.

Such an amalgam of notions converges in a new series of semi-abstract ceramic busts, executed in 2022, that will be displayed in this exhibition. These are adorned with oil paint and bear titles that reference an orchestra: namely a conductor and a selection of choir members. As its signature of his recent sculptures, the plinths are individually customised by the artist, thus acting as colourful geometric underbodies to the busts. Also, on show will be three large works on paper from the Untitled series that Silver made in California’s Death Valley in 2021 – that is, at the height of the pandemic. They consist of variations of the same subject: colourful, gigantic human heads that are devoid of necks. Silver’s work blurs the boundary between reality and imagination, exploring the complexities of human relationships and forms.

Contact
contact@lizxib.com

Elizabeth Xi Bauer Gallery
Fuel Tank, 8-12 Creekside
London SE8 3DX
United Kingdom

Photographs by Richard Ivey. Courtesy of the artists and Elizabeth Xi Bauer Gallery.

Bente Skjøttgaard: Timberline is on view at Galerie Maria Lund, Paris

February 2 – March 16, 2024

An oak can grow to be one thousand years old. A tree thus becomes a witness of time and evolutions: unfavorable weather, natural disasters, and human intervention make themselves part of it and alter its aspect.

With Timberline, Bente Skjøttgaard allows the millennial tree to speak: she imagined a fossilized, eternal, mysterious, and aethereal forest where enormous trees materialize history —and stories.

Her new sculptures, be they straight or curved, shoot up to the sky or run alongside the ground. They convey these quiet forces with great dynamism. Her surfaces, dense or openwork, evoke the thin structures of the microscopic fabric of a tree. Some of them, with their irregular mosaics, seem to outline the bark structure. Gradations of white prevail, in contrast with delicate shades of green, deep shades of blue, or even a delicious pink. A silvery sparkle is brought here and there by some knot, some appendix, some parasite growth in tin casting.

Timberline represents a border beyond which some forms of life cannot survive, thus extending a symbolic invitation to treasure life and value its importance. Here Bente Skjøttgaard pays tribute to trees, to their slow growth, to their resilient nature and their ability to absorb waste, to the precious shelter they become for many animals and tiny life forms.

By naming her works Family Tree, she suggests a parallel with the human family, with its succession of generations and its young shoots growing both under the protection of the older trees and in their shadow.

In the winter of 2005 and 2006, European forests were devastated by a storm. Seeing the ground strewn with uprooted, mutilated trees, Bente Skjøttgaard had then modeled naked roots, trunks, and heaps of branches through a range of green, yellow, and brown glazes reminiscent of utilitarian pottery. Two years later, the artist would revisit the origins of ceramic materials with Elements in White. There, rocks, organic materials, and human littering came together to make colossal sculptures unified through white glazes of extraordinary textures —coarse coral-like surfaces, cracks, sugar coating. Civilization, culture, and nature had met in this tour de force of materials.

Although Timberline relates to these past two series, it is also the result of a journey through the history of Franco-Danish ceramics of the late 19th century and early 20th century. This journey started when the Vejen Kunstmuseum in Denmark devoted a research project to Niels Hansen Jacobsen (1861-1941), following the 2020 monographic exhibition dedicated to him by the Musée Bourdelle. The Danish artist lived in Paris for ten years, having the sculptor Jean Carriès (1855-1894) as a neighbor. Jean Carriès was known for his pioneer work in ceramics, born from his fascination for pieces from the Chinese Song period and from the exclusive use of local materials characteristic of that technique. The Vejen Kunstmuseum’s research project aimed at digging deeper into the secrets of Niels Hansen Jacobsen’s overflowing creativity with the help of ten artists-ceramicists, including Bente Skjøttgaard. The Danish artist might have gotten hold of Jean Carriès’s glaze recipes, published posthumously by his assistant L. Auclair in the article Céramique de grand feu in Art et Décoration in October 1910. Working from this hypothesis, Bente Skjøttgaard tried to interpret Carriès’ recipes using his flagship principle: working on local and contemporaneous materials. LECA balls, bricks, crushed volcanic stones, and scoria from Niels Hansen Jacobsen’s kiln are all put together to form new glazes. Particularly inspired by one specific work of his —VKV3050, a small jug with a pewter handle shaped like a branch from his Parisian period—, Bente Skjøttgaard learned the casting techniques of lost wax and sand cast. This is how tin elements —partially visible, partially hidden— got themselves into Bente Skjøttgaard’s lexicon, linking her work to the fundamental research and the mysterious experiments of alchemists of yore, themselves closely related to the history of ceramics.

Feeding the human imagination from times immemorial, trees and what they might be hiding inspired countless stories and tales. Similarly, the sculptures in Timberline tell tales of temporality, of resilience, of family, and of environmental issues. These works also tell us a story of inspiration between generations of artists and of the links between the French and Danish art avant-gardes of the late 19th century, which are once again renewed by the experiments and the embodied poetry so characteristic of Bente Skjøttgaard.

Timberline is Bente Skjøttgaard’s ninth exhibition at the Galerie Maria Lund, marking two decades of collaboration between the artist and the gallery.

Contact
T. +33 (0)1 42 76 00 33

Galerie Maria Lund
48 Rue de Turenne
75003 Paris
France

Photos by Axel Fried. Courtesy of Bente Skjøttgaard & Galerie Maria Lund

Captions

• Family Tree #2326, stoneware, glaze, tin, 59x35x40 cm
• Family Tree #2324, stoneware, glaze, tin, 49x31x27 cm
• Family Tree #2319, stoneware, glaze, tin, 50x28x29 cm
• Family Tree #2352, stoneware, glaze, tin, 20x13x14 cm
• Family Tree #2339, stoneware, glaze, tin, 56x30x31 cm
• Family Tree #2338, stoneware, glaze, tin, 79x41x39 cm
• Timberline #2334, stoneware, glaze, 56x50x50 cm
• Timberline #2332, stoneware, glaze, 51x62x64 cm
• Timberline #2327, stoneware, glaze, 50x58x28 cm
• Family Tree #2323, stoneware, glaze, tin, 53x51x45 cm
• Timberline #2330, stoneware, glaze, 31x30x24 cm
• Family Tree #2346, stoneware, glaze, tin, 15x14x11 cm

California Clay is on view at Bedford Gallery, Walnut Creek, CA

January 13 – March 31, 2024

Bedford Gallery presents a survey of California-based artists working in clay with the exhibition California Clay. In response to the recent ceramics renaissance in the contemporary art world, this exhibition features an intriguing mix of functional, aesthetic, and conceptual works that highlights the versatility of the medium and celebrates ceramics as both functional and fine art.

Ceramics have a long, rich global history originating with the functional use of pottery. Over thousands of years, artists have evolved the medium into aesthetic and conceptual fine art while others, like featured artists Kat Hutter & Roger Lee, Mary Law, Brandon Lipe, Nancy Selvin, and Sandy Simon, continue to honor ancient pottery traditions with their beautiful functional works that explore form in expanded ways. For Law, function informs her daily practice, imagining how the handle of her signature bird-like ewers might feel or how the gentle cascade of water from the spout might look and sound. In her Trophy series, Selvin turns to the urn to capture the true essence of clay and celebrate remarkable figures, like Abstract Expressionist women, and artistic concepts. With Red, for instance, pays tribute to the color’s myriad meanings across cultures.

Previously labeled craft, ceramics found footing in the fine art world during the California Clay Movement of the 1950s, a period when artists sculpted clay with aesthetics, rather than function, in mind. Contemporary California artists such as Sara Bright, Mark Goudy, YehRim Lee, Mary Alison Lucas, Liza Riddle, and Erik Scollon continue to push the boundaries of what clay can do and be. As an homage to her birthplace, YehRim Lee employs traditional Korean hand-building techniques to create contours and planes that jut out from the wall or pedestal. Decadent, colorful glazes flood the fragmented surfaces in her series, Dopamine Dressing, to attempt to trick the brain into releasing mood lifting chemicals. Goudy meticulously captures subtle, often unseen, yet complex geometry in nature. As a former engineer, he harnesses science to 3D print “mother molds” for his intricate, undulating ceramics that capture the light and shadows of sine waves.

Other contemporary ceramicists use clay as a vehicle to address complex concepts. In California Clay, Robert Brady, Reniel Del Rosario, Christopher Fortin, Phyllis Green, Ahn Lee, Cathy C. Lu, Nathan Lynch, and Ehren Tool explore topics relating to the body, identity, value, politics, and war in their work. Based in Santa Monica, Green molds and morphs clay into bodily representations as seen in her Odd Old Things series. Inspired by Degas’ dainty ballerinas, Green’s bulbous, rust colored sculptures provide a stark contrast and apropos commentary on aging. For Tool, clay is a bridge between his service in the Gulf War and civilian life, a material that “is very responsive and immediate but once it goes through the fire it is unchanged for many years,” much like the aftereffects of war. He prolifically throws cups laden with military insignia and gives them away, many to veterans and their families. The cups become touchstones for unspeakable conversations, bringing awareness that the artist hopes will last well after his lifetime.

Whether for the purpose of function, aesthetics, or concept, the artists in California Clay turn to clay for its expansive creative possibilities. The exhibition showcases the versatility of the medium and ingenuity of contemporary ceramicists.

About Bedford Gallery
Bedford Gallery (BG), a program of the City of Walnut Creek, shows the work of modern and contemporary artists. The gallery is dedicated to providing the public with opportunities to learn about visual arts through public programs that are varied, accessible, challenging, and educational. Its mission is to provide exhibitions and other programs that both reflect and engage the diverse audiences of the entire Contra Costa County region. With 3,500 square feet of exhibition space, Bedford Gallery is the largest municipally operated visual arts facility between the San Francisco Bay Area and Sacramento.

About Lesher Center for the Arts
Lesher Center for the Arts is the premier arts venue in Central Contra Costa County. Located in the heart of downtown Walnut Creek, the center offers three separate theatres and Bedford Gallery, a visual arts gallery, presenting the best of theater, ballet, comedy, and visual art.

Contact
artsrec@walnut-creek.org

Bedford Gallery at Lesher Center for the Arts
1601 Civic Drive
Walnut Creek, CA 94596
United States

Reyaz Badaruddin and Élodie Alexandre: From a home in the hills is on view at GallerySKE, New Delhi

January 20 – March 2, 2024

Teach the children. We don’t matter so much, but the children do. Show them daisies and the pale hepatica. Teach them the taste of sassafras and wintergreen. The lives of the bluesailors, mallow, sunbursts, the moccasin flowers. And the frisky ones—inkberry, lamb’s quarters, blueberries. And the aromatic ones—rosemary, oregano. Give them peppermint to put in their pockets as they go to school. Give them the fields and the woods and the possibility of the world salvaged from the lords of profit. Stand them in the stream, head them upstream, rejoice as they learn to love this green space they live in, its sticks and leaves and then the silent, beautiful blossoms.¹

Every morning, Reyaz, Élodie, and their daughter, Alif, awaken in Andretta — an artist villagenestled in the Kangra Valley of Himachal Pradesh. Conceived in the 1920s by Norah Richards, it is home to a community that has embraced generations of playwrights and artists.

Slow, long-limbed thoughts at breakfast mark the beginning of their day, as the whole sky flies in; play is never far from the impression of the creative drive, never far from the happiness of discovery in their studio² — where the rest of the day is spent making.

GALLERYSKE presents From a home in the hills, an exhibition of works by Reyaz Badaruddin and Élodie Alexandre. Here, the lines between work and play, studio and home, are blurred to showcase artistic paths that tread between intention and chance.

Clay, a material steeped in history, is central to this body of work. As a revealer of culture, it offers proximity to a creative process that is often organic and inadvertent. And the hand(s) that shape it is everywhere in evidence — patting, pinching, squishing, rolling, punching, and painting.³ The artists, both trained ceramicists, employ this malleability to arrive at new possibilities.

Reyaz merges traditional techniques with contemporary elements, challenging formal canons of art-making. By stripping everyday objects of their functionality, he prompts reflection on the dichotomies between art and craft, old and new. Inherent to clay’s materiality is an invitation to play, tempering the hubris of artistic intention with the acknowledgment that accident and chance are endemic to all human activities⁴. In this process, Alif is both co-creator and play partner. Her presence introduces colour and simplicity into Reyaz’s works, offering fresh interpretations to his ongoing dialogue with the medium.

Élodie’s multi-layered ceramic pieces delve into the personal by exploring themes of motherhood and identity to narrate a story of becoming. They point to the addition of (or a response to) Alif’s voice – sometimes unexpected, and at first resisted – until fully embraced through a lens of possibility. Birth (2018) marks the beginning of this conversation, delving into an internal cataclysm to articulate episodes of postpartum depression. Through the exhibition, Élodie builds towards an active reckoning of Alif to ultimately celebrate birth – an endless beginning⁵.

The gallery becomes a portal into the idyll of Andretta through which viewers are invited into the warmth of the artists’ studio-home. Objects like journals, drawings, and storybooks adorn the white cube to inject into it the same sense of frolic and discovery. And in this world, Alif’s playful interruptions become opportunities for reflection and creation. Akin to a spectral thread, she is intricately woven through narrative and form, into the fabric of the artists’ practice.

The exhibition anchors itself in a spirit of openness, vulnerability, and collaboration, to ultimately offer a glimpse into the relationship between artist creation and family dynamic.

Essay by Rhea Maheshwari, independent curator and consultant based in New Delhi

Contact
post@galleryske.com

GallerySKE
A-4 Green Avenue Street Off Green Avenue
Church/Mall Road, Vasant Kunj
New Delhi 110070
India

Photos courtesy of GallerySKE

Donna Green: At Last, No More is on view at HB381 Gallery, New York

January 12 – February 24, 2024

HB381 is pleased to announce At Last, No More, an exhibition of new ceramic sculptures and drawings by New York-based artist Donna Green (Australian, b. 1960). Green plays with coils of stoneware, prodding and poking to create anthropomorphic gestural shapes that burst and stretch into space, testing the clay’s physical limits. Her vessels are in a continuing state of growth and transformation; heroically scaled urns undulate and drip with layer upon layer of glaze.

The artist and writer Janelle Lynch has contributed an essay on Green’s work, excerpted below:

“It’s taken me a long time to get here, but this is what I want to do. I want to make sculptures,” she told me. In fact, Green has wanted to create sculpture all along, but because of the onus she has felt to make utilitarian objects and to hew to antiquated ideas of gender, she has created objects with a purpose. Now she is asserting—foremost to herself—that she, too, can build nonfunctional closed forms. This presents a new view on the shapes that relate to male and female sexual anatomy that have appeared in Green’s work in recent years. Until now they have suggested sexual liberation, but the creation of breast-like and phallic forms has also been part of her process of declaring herself an artist. An additional part of that process has been eschewing notions of open vessels signifying the female body and function, and closed or towering forms signifying the male body and sculpture. For Green, “They can be either. The piece itself is the guide.” What is essential to her is that the work is alive. “I want it to have a lot of energy—to epitomize life in an energetic way. That’s my goal.”

Green’s embrace of her identity as an artist is also evident in oil stick drawings on canvas and ink drawings on watercolor paper. Dense with meandering lines and punctuated by fiery marks, the oil stick drawings are Green’s interpretations of nature surrounding her Water Mill studio. Sometimes the drawings serve as a landscape she views as she builds her sculptures. Open and fluid, black and white, Green creates the ink drawings with one continuous gesture forming organic shapes. She sometimes makes both the oil stick and ink drawings with her eyes closed, reveling in touch, materials, the arc of her arm, the movement of her body. The drawing methods seem to allow space for different facets of Green’s personality—ardent and determined, graceful and elegant.

While her work is enriched by her biography, it is equally imbued with art history. Green was raised in a family with a deep appreciation for art, and for much of her life she has looked at it with a fervor similar to that which drives her own creative practice. The clay works in the exhibition draw inspiration from the coiled funerary vessels from Japan’s Jōmon period (c. 14,000 – 300 BCE) and figurative Haniwa tomb sculpture of the Kofun period (c. 300 – 710 CE). The form at the top of Green’s untitled 2023 vessel pays homage to Silla urns from Korea’s Three Kingdoms period (c. 57 BCE – 676 CE). The oil stick and ink drawings reference Joan Mitchell’s and Emily Kame Kngwarreye’s lively abstract paintings.

Contact
info@hb381gallery.com

HB381
381 Broadway
New York, NY 10013
United States

Photos by Joe Kramm

Feigned Utility: New Ceramic Work by Shalene Valenzuela is on view at Plinth Gallery, Denver

February 2 – March 30, 2024

Shalene Valenzuela was born and raised in Santa Barbara California. She holds an Master of Fine Arts degree from California College of Arts and Crafts. She is currently the executive director of the Clay studio of Missoula in Missoula, Montana. She has been a resident Artist at The Archie Bray Foundation, Watershed Center for the Ceramic Arts, and the LH Project. She has taught at the University of Montana, Oregon College of Arts and Crafts, and UC Berkeley. Her work has been featured in group and solo exhibitions nationally and is in many private and public collections.

Her sculptures deal with contemporary issues in a thoughtful, humorous yet ironic tone. She reproduces everyday objects and the imagery is hand painted. Her narrative work references fairytales, urban myths, consumer culture, etiquette, and societal expectations, to mention a few. “Stylistically, my imagery is derived from somewhat dated sources that represent an idealized time in society and advertising. Beneath the shiny veneer of these relics hides a complex and sometimes contradictory truth of what things seem to appear as upon first glance.”

She defines her ceramic pieces as “essentially a form of trompe l’oeil.” She works with the “notion that “things are not what they initially seem to be. The object being referenced remains recognizable while the illustrations are imperative in creating the narratives that weave various dialogues and statements within and about the physical object. Exploring issues focusing on women is important for many reasons, most notably in examining my own personal history and how I evolved into who I am today. However, my investigations speak to a greater issue of how women are seen in society, historically and today. My explorations of self-perception and expectations address how assumptions of character based on societal biases leads to a precarious and unbalanced state of humankind.”

Jonathan Kaplan, Plinth Gallery curator notes that “Shalene’s ceramic work is intensely personal, humorous, perceptive, yet serious. They are acerbic and satirical commentaries on our current culture.”

Contact
gallery@plinthgallery.com

Plinth Gallery
River North Art District (RiNo)
3520 Brighton Blvd
Denver, CO 80216
United States

Jinsik Yoo: Procession is on view at Jane Hartsook Gallery, New York

January 12 – February 23, 2024

The Jane Hartsook Gallery is pleased to present new work by Jinsik Yoo. In his solo debut, Yoo uses figurative abstraction to question cultural boundaries, examining the border between myth and reality, the state and its people, and the body and its past or future. Drawing from Korean myths as well as his own experiences, Yoo asks how boundaries are drawn and what it costs to maintain them.

The sculptures in this exhibition reimagine how we experience those boundaries internally and in our relationships with others. One figure captures the moment of transformation in a classical Korean creation myth in which a tiger and a bear beg to become human. Another represents Yoo’s experience as a riot police officer during his mandatory military service, when he was charged to become an embodiment of state power. Still other pieces in this exhibition draw on feelings of joy and liberation Yoo experienced as a queer person moving from South Korea, where he was living in the closet, to the United States. Yoo uses these works to consider how border crossings—across forms, cultural conventions, and space—are essential to existence and to art making.

Jinsik Yoo is a New York-based figurative ceramic sculptor and painter. Yoo earned his MFA from the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University and his BFA from Konkuk University in Seoul, South Korea. Recent exhibitions include: the Cincinnati Art Academy (Ohio; 2023), The Clay Studio in Philadelphia (Pennsylvania; 2023), and the Eutectic Gallery (Portland, OR; 2021). His work is held in a number of public collections, including the Museum of Modern Art of Medellin, Colombia and the Alfred Ceramic Art Museum. He is currently a resident artist at The Clay Studio in Philadelphia.

Greenwich House Pottery has held exhibitions of ceramics since as early as 1905, but a permanent exhibition space was not opened until 1970, under the direction of Jane Hartsook (Director, Greenwich House Pottery 1945-1982). The Pottery had long been a hub for amateur and professional artists alike, and the addition of a permanent gallery space reflected how it had developed into an important center for American ceramic arts. Upon her retirement in 1982, the gallery was renamed the Jane Hartsook Gallery in her honor.

The Jane Hartsook Gallery is a permanent gallery space of the Greenwich House Pottery.

Contact
info@greenwichhouse.org

Greenwich House Pottery
16 Jones Street
New York, NY 10014
United States

Photos by Alan Wiener, courtesy Greenwich House Pottery

Akio Takamori: Consideration is on view at Keramikmuseum Westerwald, Höhr-Grenzhausen

January 26 – April 6, 2024

It was migration to another continent that sparked an interest in his culture. The prints of Shikō Munakata and the erotic images of Kitagawa Utamaro helped Takamori to find his own artistic language. He became aware of his roots only from a distance and developed a keen sense of the peculiarities he had to harmonize in his new life.

Akio Takamori was born in Nobeoka, Miyazaki, Japan, in 1950. During his apprenticeship in traditional Japanese pottery, he met the American ceramist Ken Ferguson, who invited him to study with him. Takamori subsequently moved to the USA in 1974. Ferguson also encouraged the timid student at the Kansas City Art Institute to work figuratively. Initially, Takamori used the vessel as a basis. He later expanded his range of media to include drawings and prints. Takamori continued his studies at Alfred University (NY), where he received his MFA degree in 1978. This was followed by various artist residencies at the Archie Bray Foundation in Montana, the European Ceramic Workcentre in the Netherlands, and the Kecskemét International Ceramic Studios in Hungary. From 1993 to 2014, he taught at the University of Washington.

Classical works from European art history often formed a starting point in Takamori’s work. But typical Asian depictions, such as the so-called karako – images of children playing on Japanese pottery or carved ivory figures embodying innocence and joy – were also a constant source of inspiration. The sibling series, where a large child carries the smaller one, began with a profoundly moving image from the series Photographing the Bomb by Japanese photographer Yosuke Yamahata.

The theme of complementary opposites can be found in all of his works. He never lost himself in heterogeneous stereotypes but instead explored the complexity of identities. Man and woman, child and adult, mountain and cloud, bore and carried: Takamori sought balance and the overcoming of controversies. He deliberately never fixed the size of the figures. As a viewer, you sometimes have to bow down to enter into dialogue with the object. Takamori consistently paid attention to duality, not only in the depiction but also in the material. Sensual calligraphic brushstrokes and warm watercolor tones can be found on hard stoneware. The speed and liveliness of the painting are combined with the carefully constructed and slow-fired ceramics. Akio Takamori explored his identity between two contrasting worlds very sensitively. “My interest is in humanity,” said the artist, showing himself to be a poetic mediator in an increasingly polarised society. His message proves to be touchingly optimistic and full of hope.

Shortly after his early death in January 2017, the James Harris Gallery presented the exhibition Apology / Remorse, in which Takamori, inspired by media images, thematized the gesture of public apology. These striking and highly contemporary works depict the Japanese ritual of restoring social harmony while simultaneously expressing the human desire to heal or overcome history. Some of these last works will also be presented at the Keramikmuseum Westerwald exhibition, organized in cooperation with the Kunstforum Solothurn.

Text by Nele van Wieringen.

Contact
kontakt@keramikmuseum.de

Keramikmuseum Westerwald
Lindenstraße 13
56203 Höhr-Grenzhausen
Germany

Photos by Helge Articus

George Sherman: On Fire is on view at Marta, Los Angeles

January 6 – February 17, 2024

Marta is delighted to announce On Fire, an exhibition of new works by Pasadena-based master ceramicist George Sherman. With soft reference to the forms and linguistic play first presented in FOX, BOBCAT, BEAR (2022), the artist has composed a body of work that reflects both the scale of his environment—Sherman lives and works in the dramatic foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains—and the boundaries of his monumental, yet enticingly delicate, applications of clay.

By virtue of process, the ceramicist must think in terms of iteration; the production of related pairs or multiples to safeguard against failure. It is this submission to materiality, to the capriciousness of clay, that facilitates choice—a path between variations in color, texture, and form that branch out with the flexing curvatures of an old-growth tree. It is these curves, their expressive arcs and degrees of motion, that lead the viewer into Sherman’s work and bring us, maze-like, through its manifold narratives. They are the sinuous bodies of snakes; the cerulean ripples—constructed as concentric circles—that orbit the pillowy splash from an invisible diver; the harmonious ‘O’ in CROW(N) that letters a scow. Each of these forms—reflective of both the artist’s place of residence, situated within a Wildland-Urban Interface designation, and his upbringing as a self-described ‘Navy Brat’—interweave environment with experience, history with memory, and reiterate Sherman’s technical capacity to render the grandeurs, both great and small, of the organic world.

Anchoring the show’s larger works, located in the gallery’s primary exhibition space, are a series of trays and cups. These functional foils, dispersed between the main- and ante-rooms, are solid canvases for the artist’s eloquent renderings of dogs, cacti, and mountainscapes, alongside the ram’s head of Georgia O’Keeffe, the Campbell’s Soup can of Andy Warhol, and the 90° angles of Frank Stella—three of the nine mugs that comprise the series First Name Basis, which pays homage to a selection of lauded twentieth-century American artists. The subtle breadth of the exhibition, scaled from palm to peak, is a reminder of Sherman’s curriculum vitae—his course of life, which like a climber’s ascent, moves eternal with hand to earth.

George Sherman (b. 1945, San Diego) is a Pasadena-based ceramic artist. A long-time studio tech and professor (ret. 2018) at CSU, USC, and Scripps College, Sherman is a torch-bearer of and for the California Clay Movement, having been a pupil of Philip Cornelius at Pasadena City College in the late 1960s, and of John Mason at UC Irvine in the early 1970s. This is the artist’s third-ever solo exhibition, and his second with the gallery.

Contact
information@marta.la

Marta
3021 Rowena Avenue
Los Angeles, CA 90039
United States

Photos by Erik Benjamins

Aesthetics of Everyday Objects: The Cup is on view at ATLA, Los Angeles

January 13 – February 10, 2024

Aesthetics of Everyday Objects: The Cup emerges at a time when seasonal shows around domestic objects are ubiquitous and ceaselessly flirt with the standardized idea of a simple form with a determined function. There’s no doubt that to this day, when uttering the words “ceramic” and “clay,” images of pottery in various pastels pop up in one’s mind, and the potential of a cup being “sculptural”, “painterly,” or “conceptual” erases itself from possibility.

What emerges in response is a 39-person group exhibition highlighting the works of painters, sculptors, mixed-media artists, designers, and ceramicists. Aesthetics of Everyday Objects: The Cup serves as a distinctive disruption from its stereotype, and is built upon the legacy of Betty Asher (1914–94), a renowned Los Angeles curator, collector, and dealer. Credited for being one of the first people to collect Pop Art, and for driving Los Angeles’s cultural scene, Asher simultaneously fulfilled her thirst for inventive works through the inclusion of ceramics and elevated its place from the domestic, at a time when prejudices against the medium were at an all-time high.

An early supporter of Ken Price, Asher invited the likes of Roy Lichtenstein, Philip Guston, and Claes Oldenburg (to name just a few) to take on the idea of a cup and/or a teacup— asking them to dream within their own artistic language and reimagine this humble form. With over 150 works by various artists that Asher admired, including Ron Nagle, Betty Woodman, and Akio Takamori, many of which now live within LACMA’s permanent collection after her passing, ATLA picks up the conversation roughly 50 years later.

For the catalogue, Andres Payan Estrada has written a romantic eulogy from a place of being both an artist and curator. A vantage point that bridges the historical and the personal, Estrada’s uniquely poetic perspective holds one’s hand through a journey of object ontology, object–subject dynamics, and metaphoric accounts of the object as tool. With a strong focus on contemporary craft within both of his practices, he currently serves as the Director of Public Engagement at Craft Contemporary here in Los Angeles.

It is through ATLA’s collective gathering of contemporary voices that a newfound celebration of a cup as an intellectual pursuit can act as a conduit for the more present day practices we see reflected within this group. The unmistakable symbolism of the cup reimagined through a contemporary lens uniquely blurs the class-bound distinctions between the realms of craft, design, and contemporary art. It is hoped that the current wave of exaltation around this medium can continue to push the bounds of what we know into what we do not. Only then can real innovation begin to stir our imaginations and perhaps ignite something within us that has been lying dormant.

Text by Jenny Hata Blumenfield

Featured Artists
Adam Shiverdecker, Akihide Nakao, Amia Yokoyama, Anabel Juarez, Astrid Terrazas, Ben Medansky, BZIPPY, Cammi Climaco, Chelsey Pettyjohn, Erik Otsea, Eun-Ha Paek, Graham Marks, Grant Levy-Lucero, Jackie Rines, Jay Kvapil, Jennie Jieun Lee, Jose Sierra, Julia Haft-Candell, Julia M Kunin, Kiyoshi Kaneshiro, Kristen Morgin, Lizette Hernandez, Mustafa Ali Clayton, Nicki Green, Olive Diamond, Peter Shire, Phyllis Green, Roger Herman, Roksana Pirouzmand, Ricca Okano, Ryan Flores, Shdopp (A Michael Dopp + Shoshi Watanabe Collaboration), Stanley Edmonson, Tâm Van Tran, Taylor Kibby, Teekay Tamarappoo, The Perfect Nothing Catalog, Vamba Bility, Zimra Beiner

Contact
hello@atla.works

ATLA
1545 W. Sunset Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90026
United States

Kristy Moreno: The Company We Keep is on view at OCHI, Los Angeles

January 6 – February 10, 2024

OCHI is pleased to present The Company We Keep, an exhibition of new work by artist Kristy Moreno. This is the artist’s first solo exhibition with the gallery.

The Company We Keep features new ceramic vessels, figures, and wall works that celebrate female friendship, sisterhood, and chosen community. Blending elements of SoCal Latinx culture with the sugary aesthetics of late 1990s girl power and a retro-futuristic approach to fashion, Moreno builds worlds in which female protagonists express their individuality, explore the world, and thrive together. Deeply inspired by the diverse voices that emerge from various D.I.Y. subcultures such as punk pioneer Poly Styrene, multidisciplinary artist Margaret Kilgallen, and authors adrienne maree brown and Gloria Anzaldúa, Moreno’s ceramic characters band together in the face of oppression, chaos, and harm as they echo the ethos of self-sufficiency and empower one another with an eye toward speculative futures.

Building voluminous vessels intuitively, Moreno draws into the surface of the clay, fitting figures together like a bioorganic puzzle, carving out detail and adding shape as needed. Moreno creates friends that embrace, link arms, pose back-to-back, and offer each other gestures of comfort, support, and affection. Absent of solitary figures, The Company We Keep proffers abundance and solidarity—Moreno’s young women always have someone to stand up for and to stand with. While clay vessels traditionally stored or served food and liquids, Moreno’s vessels hold her figures together—asking the viewer to physically circumnavigate each sculpture in order to observe the full scope of love and style embodied by each group.

Though Moreno’s protagonists are always together, they are individually distinguishable as fashionistas, endlessly borrowing from an array of historical sources—midcentury Chicanx lowrider culture; 1950s beehive updos; the bold geometric prints of Moreno’s mother’s wardrobe from the 1980s; contemporary punk visor sunglasses; and 1990s Chola staples like nameplate jewelry. Featuring sassy or subversive phrases, many of Moreno’s characters don earrings emblazoned with terms of endearment like MIJA (my daughter), CHULA (cute), or CHINGONA (bad ass woman) and exclamations of personal boundaries such as NOT YOURS or GO AWAY. Soft pastel colors pair well with hard stares and sharp attitudes—Moreno’s girls wear their hearts on their sleeves. Pushing cuteness beyond the commodifiable and forging space to care for themselves and for one another, Moreno crafts a world in which being in community is the first step to social change.

Kristy Moreno (b. 1991, Inglewood, CA) received her Associates in Arts from Santa Ana College in Santa Ana, CA and her BFA in ceramics from California State University, Chico in Chico, CA. Moreno’s work has been exhibited nationally and internationally at venues including MUZEO Museum and Cultural Center in Anaheim, CA; Glassell Gallery in Baton Rouge, LA; Lucy Lacoste Gallery in Concord, MA; Volery Gallery in Dubai, United Arab Emirates; and at Thinkspace Projects and Tlaloc Studios in Los Angeles, CA. Her work has been featured in publications including Voyage LA, Las Vegas Weekly, Beautiful Bizarre, and Artfix Daily. Moreno is the recipient of various awards and residencies including the Taunt Fellowship, the Windgate-Lamar Fellowship, and the Jack Winsor Memorial Scholarship. Moreno recently completed a two-year residency at the Archie Bray Foundation in Helena, MT and will begin a three-month residency at Cerámica Suro in Guadalajara, México in February 2024.

Contact
gallery@ochigallery.com

OCHI
3301 W Washington Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90019
United States

Images courtesy of the Artist and OCHI

Jiha Moon: Storyteller Yellow is on view at Shoshana Wayne Gallery, Los Angeles

December 2, 2023 – January 27, 2024

Shoshana Wayne Gallery is pleased to announce Storyteller Yellow, Jiha Moon’s first solo exhibition with the gallery.

Jiha Moon’s ceramics and painting draw from Korean folklore, Western contemporary art, and popular culture to create hybrid forms with a vibrant and personal visual language. Born in Daegu, South Korea and recently moving to Tallahassee, Florida after living in Atlanta for 18 years, Moon’s iconography speaks to the complexity of human experience in a globalized world where images are easily shared and recontextualized. She is a cartographer of cultures and an icon maker of cultural landscapes, including symbols from American and Korean culture to produce works that look both familiar and unconventional. In Storyteller Yellow, Moon’s visual vocabulary includes dumplings, fortune cookies, peach, Haetae, banana peels, Pennsylvania Dutch folk art, Milagro, and fireworks along with images of the artist’s son and pets to connect these motifs to her personal history. Embracing contrasting ideas and imagery is a way for Moon to subvert commonly held stereotypes of Asian and Asian-American communities, instead celebrating Asian culture by putting traditional symbols in conversation with emblems of contemporary pop-culture.

The title Storyteller Yellow is drawn from Moon’s interest in the color yellow, which she investigates in both aesthetic and racialized contexts. Moon uses yellow for its “social, political, or cultural point of view,” acknowledging an association between the color and racial slurs towards Asian-Americans. Through abundant and prominent uses of yellow in her work, Moon subverts biases against the color and transforms yellow into a point of joy. The blossoms of chrysanthemums, broad strokes of yellow dancing between visual references to landscape painting, the inclusion of a banana peel stretching across a canvas, and the bold use of yellow as a vibrant base become points of exuberance in these works. By centering and celebrating yellow, the color becomes a piece of conversation through Moon’s work, forcing viewers to acknowledge its presence and conjure positive associations with yellow, such as sunshine.

Moon’s work acknowledges the multicultural world taking shape around us, and her mixing of iconography asks the viewer to reflect on how art and society can benefit from this fusion. Posing the question of where someone or something “comes from” is not simple – and often times not important – in the 21st century. All of the works in Storyteller Yellow push the boundaries of categorization, inhabiting many identities at once and reflecting the diversity of experiences and cultures in our world.

Jiha Moon (b. 1973) lives and works in Tallahassee, Florida. She received a BFA from Korea University, Seoul, an MFA from Ewha Woman’s University, Seoul, and an MFA from the University of Iowa. She is currently an assistant professor in the Department of Art at Florida State University, Tallahassee. Moon is a 2023 John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellow in Fine Arts. She has exhibited in museums and galleries internationally including the Asian Art Museum, San Fransico, CA; Renwick Gallery, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC; FSU Museum of Fine Arts, Tallahassee, FL; Crystal Bridges Museum, Bentonville, AR; and The Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia, PA. Her work is in the collections of the Asian Art Museum, San Fransico, CA; Renwick Gallery, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC; High Museum, Atlanta, GA; Asia Society and Museum, New York, NY; Mint Museum, Charlotte, NC; and Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, VA, among many others.

Contact
mail@shoshanawayne.com

Shoshana Wayne Gallery
5247 W. Adams Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90016
United States

Photos courtesy of the gallery

Artists: Aarti Vir, Adil Writer, Dipalee Daroz, Ela Mukherjee, Keshari Nandan Prasad, L N Tallur, Madhur Sen, Manjunath Kamath, Mudita Bhandari, Neha Kudchadkar, P R Daroz, Ray Meeker, Reyaz Badaruddin, Shampa Shah, Shirley Bhatnagar & Pallavi Arora, Supriya Menin Meneghetti, Trupti Patel

Curator: Kristine Michael, India

Drawing parallels between India’s rich cultural and philosophical traditions and the Korean cultural heritage and spiritual foundations, this significant exhibition at Clay Arch Gimhae Museum takes ceramics as the unifying creative medium that holds immense cultural, historical, and artistic significance in both countries. Clay has played a significant role in both cultures, as utilitarian objects and as items of aesthetic, ritual, festive and symbolic value. The tradition of making in clay has continued to evolve and contemporary ceramic artists blend traditional techniques with modern artistic expressions, ensuring the continuity of this ancient craft. They serve as a testament to the craftsmanship and artistic sensibility of artists throughout the ages, and they continue to be cherished as both functional objects and works of art.

India is a site where the past and present intersect in fragmented refractions. We live in a space where there are worlds together revealing the hidden connections and contradictions and worlds apart, that anticipate the future which we are moving towards with lightning speed aided by technology and globalization. This exhibition shows artistic engagement that ties in the historical past and present with specific body of works through the lens of the artists’ own lived experience or collective cultural memory. This serves as a source of inspiration in both visual and material ways in order to make visible traces of the past, often lost, displaced or counter to the dominant narratives.

Ceramics in India itself is often considered the ‘unarchived’ and ‘unrecorded’ in modernism, the forgotten primary material in the advent of new materials and technology, the marginalized narrative of an entire hereditary craft in the colonial categorisation of fine art versus craft.

The artists in ‘Multiple Realities’ each reflect on their use of the medium and their own practice from the perspective of ceramics in the 21st century not as a static entity, but one that is in a constant state of flux or transformation. Their works are not simply a question of preserving the past, but instead a challenge to rethink and reimagine the role of ceramics in shaping the cultural memory and history in the future. The voices of artistic practice seen here is defined by the past, represented in the present and anticipate the future.

Manjunath Kamath’s relief-sculptural installation ‘Private Poem’ consists of 127 small pieces of terracotta sculpture arranged on the wall in six or seven rows, which look like text – somewhat like the ancient hieroglyphics – when viewed from a distance. On closer perusal, the individual pieces are revealed to be fragments of classical and traditional Indian sculpture and temple architecture.

Suspended between the past and the future, Daroz’s architectural gateways provide a unique sensory experience set out in space and time. The threshold marks an invasion as well as an intimate experience of a space that is both personal and public. The portal invokes resonances of the Buddhist stupas that act as transitions between old and new: gouged out with memories both of pain, delight and longing, they entice the viewer to reconsider a new age with the impulse to live anew. They are witness to the times, serving as a testimony to past lives and societies. Fossil like forms embedded in the recesses remind one again of being carriers of cyclical time.
Trupti Patel responds through her sculptures and installation to the story of Heo Hwang-ok that represents the enduring cultural and historical bonds between Korea and India and serves as a reminder of the shared heritage of these two nations.

Aarti Vir’s Shadow Crossing references the Indian myth of the tyrannical asura Hiranyakashipu, who cannot be destroyed by weapon, man or beast, neither during the day or night, nor indoors or out. He meets his death at the hands of Narasimha, half-man half-lion avatar of Lord Vishnu who dismembers him – with his claws, on a threshold, at dusk. The life-size doorways invite visitors to walk through. As each threshold is breached, the viewer will pass into a space and substance that either physically challenges or provokes the senses, with the intent to encourage reflection upon those often-unnoticed spaces, with their potential for transformation, resurrection or dissolution.

Ela Mukherjee’s Meanderings is an installation based on her experience of the pandemic lock down in Delhi. It consists of approximately 125 pieces and spans in a spiral of 7 ft diameter. The work is a repetitive sequencing with separate smaller elements to form a large cohesive sculptural installation. The minimal drawings on each of these records her daily experience of the period on abstract terms.

Neha Kudchadkar’s Weightlifter, a moving image work, is part of a recurring project – Auto Ethnography Through Objects – which marks Kudchadkar’s body in the socio-political space it occupies through objects, at different points of her life. Weightlifter documents a difficult, precarious, uncomfortable moment in time, made heavy by grief, breakdowns, depression and helplessness. Made during the pandemic, it records the guilt and struggle of breathing as a world collapses around her.

Often, in Kudchadkar’s work, the focus is the body. The actor. The acted upon. She explores the body as object. As a tool for the making as well as the experience of objects. The objects tell stories of their making, stories (and secrets) of the body. The body has often been likened to clay. The body as ‘that which has emerged from the earth and that will eventually become one with it’.

Madhur Sen’s art not only has the potential to create meaningful and thought-provoking visual experiences but also to advocate for positive change and social justice. By portraying the daily wage workers of India and their struggles, Sen is contributing to a broader dialogue about the importance of fair wages, labor rights, and social equity. Her work is a powerful testament to the resilience and strength of these individuals who play a vital role in society. Through her art, she humanizes the daily wage workers, giving them a face and a story which helps the audience to empathize with their struggles and recognize their dignity and humanity. It documents a part of Indian society that is often invisible or ignored, preserving their stories for future generations.

Filmmaker Pallavi Arora and Ceramic artist Shirley Bhatnagar explore the idea of loss and creation through the medium of clay. Engaging with artifacts unearthed from the oldest Indus Valley Sites from figural to anthropomorphic works the duo have combined animation and drawings to make a lyrical and experimental film.

The complicated exchanges between the legacies of cultural imperialism and the ever-increasing popularity of yoga around the world today attest to an inverse dynamic of colonialism. Tallur’s installation is based upon a strange confluence in India’s colonial history. Two hundred years ago, Christian missionaries from Basel opened a tile factory in the coastal town of Mangalore in the southern Indian state of Karnataka (where L.N. Tallur was raised and continues to live part-time). While drawing a connection between Hatha Yoga, the representations of colonial subjects for museological displays, and the gruelling experience of the missionaries during their time in India, Tallur’s sculpture also reflects upon some of the more absurd manifestations of human endeavour.

Contact
info@clayarch.org

The ClayArch Gimhae Museum
275-51 Jillye-ro, Jillye-myeon
Gimhae-si, Gyeongsangnam-do
South Korea

Photos Courtesy ClayArch Gimhae Museum

Radical Clay: Contemporary Women Artists from Japan is on view at The Art Institute of Chicago

December 16, 2023 – June 3, 2024

The Art Institute of Chicago is pleased to announce Radical Clay: Contemporary Women Artists from Japan on view from December 16, 2023 through June 3, 2024. The exhibition features 40 stunning works by 36 different women artists from across Japan, showcasing the inventiveness and variety of work that is driving the ceramics movement forward.

While women have historically been underrecognized for their contributions to the ceramics field, this show brings both established and emerging women artists to the forefront and focuses on the explosion of innovative and technically ambitious compositions by such artists particularly since 1970.

“There are so many strong contemporary women artists from Japan that are truly pushing the limits in ceramics and clay beyond what we’ve ever seen traditionally,” said Janice Katz, Roger L. Weston Associate Curator of Japanese Art, the Art Institute of Chicago. “This show brings together artists on the cutting edge of invention in terms of materials, glaze, and technique, and we are thrilled to recognize their contributions to the global ceramics field.”

The creators featured in the show span several generations of women contemporary artists, and while they have been featured in other shows, this is the first major exhibition to position these artists together to highlight their collective achievements and impact. Three artists featured in the show–Mishima Kimiyo (born 1932), Tsuboi Asuka (born 1932), and Ogawa Machiko (born 1946)–began their careers decades ago and continue to produce groundbreaking sculptures that drive the clay medium in a new direction. Konno Tomoko (born 1965), Aoki Katsuyo (born 1972), and Oishi Sayaka (born 1979) are part of younger generations and are represented by pieces featuring bodily distortion to fantastical decoration. These women have routinely confronted expectations about their practice and often refuse gender-imposed constraints in their work, approaching subjects in unconventional ways.

Artists: Tsuji Kyō, Futamura Yoshimi, Tokuda Yasokichi IV, Tanaka Yū, Fukumoto Fuku, Fujino Sachiko, Fujikasa Satoko, Koike Shōko, Hiruma Kazuyo, Nakaigawa Yuki, Ogawa Machiko, Kishi Eiko, Kitamura Junko, Tsuboi Asuka, Hosono Hitomi, Hattori Makiko, Tanaka Tomomi, Hayashi Kaku, Hoshino Kayoko, Mishima Kimiyo, Matsuda Yuriko, Shigematsu Ayumi, Hashimoto Machiko, Shingū Sayaka, Tashima Etsuko, Katsumata Chieko, Inaba Chikako, Tokumaru Kyōko, Aoki Katsuyo, Konno Tomoko, Tomita Mikiko, Ōishi Sayaka, Ikake Sayuri, Kawaura Saki, Mori Aya, Yamaguchi Mio

The exhibition is accompanied by a richly illustrated catalog with essays and insights by Janice Katz, Joe Earle, and Hollis Goodall. Additionally, bringing these artists to global attention has been made possible by the generous collaboration with Carol and Jeffrey Horvitz, who shared all of the selected pieces in the show from their exemplary collection.

Radical Clay: Contemporary Women Artists from Japan is curated by the Art Institute of Chicago’s Janice Katz

Lead support for Radical Clay: Contemporary Women Artists from Japan is generously provided by Carol & Jeffrey Horvitz. Additional support is contributed by the Japan Foundation.

The Art Institute of Chicago
111 South Michigan Avenue
Chicago, IL 60603
United States

Captions

• Aoki Katsuyo. 青木克世. Loom II, 2014. Carol & Jeffrey Horvitz Collection of Contemporary Japanese Ceramics.
• Kishi Eiko 岸映子. Compilation of Recollected Images (心象を積む), 2017. Carol & Jeffrey Horvitz Collection of Contemporary Japanese Ceramics.
• Tashima Etsuko 田嶋悦子. Flower No. 10 (花-10), 2013. Carol & Jeffrey Horvitz Collection of Contemporary Japanese Ceramics.
• Fujikasa Satoko. 藤笠砂都子. Seraphim, 2016. Carol & Jeffrey Horvitz Collection of Contemporary Japanese Ceramics.
• Hattori Makiko. 服部真紀子. Samayou (Wandering), 2012. Carol & Jeffrey Horvitz Collection of Contemporary Japanese Ceramics.
• Inaba Chikako 稲葉周子. Leaf Vessel (葉器), 2017. Carol & Jeffrey Horvitz Collection of Contemporary Japanese Ceramics.
• Katsumata Chieko. 勝間田千恵子. Akoda (Pumpkin), 2015. Carol & Jeffrey Horvitz Collection of Contemporary Japanese Ceramics.
• Hashimoto Machiko 橋本真知子. Shining Moment, 2012. Carol & Jeffrey Horvitz Collection of Contemporary Japanese Ceramics.
• Mishima Kimiyo. 三島喜美代. Untitled (Crushed Asahi Beer Box), 2007. Carol & Jeffrey Horvitz Collection of Contemporary Japanese Ceramics.
• Ogawa Machiko. 小川待子. Akai utsuwa (Red Vessel), 2021. Carol and Jeffrey Horvitz Collection.
• Fujino Sachiko 藤野さち子. Transformation: Black (変容・黒18-1), 2018. Carol & Jeffrey Horvitz Collection of Contemporary Japanese Ceramics.
• Tanaka Yu. 田中悠. Fukuromono (Bag Work), 2018. Carol & Jeffrey Horvitz Collection of Contemporary Japanese Ceramics.
• Tsuboi Asuka. 坪井明日香. Karaori mo (Chinese-Brocade Ancient Skirt), 2017. Carol & Jeffrey Horvitz Collection of Contemporary Japanese Ceramics.
• Yamaguchi Mio. 山口美音. Shura, 2020. Carol & Jeffrey Horvitz Collection of Contemporary Japanese Ceramics.
• Futamura Yoshimi フタムラヨシミ. Big Birth, 2016. Carol & Jeffrey Horvitz Collection of Contemporary Japanese Ceramics.

Northern Latitude 60.20890 is on view at Iittala & Arabia Design Centre, Helsinki

September 14, 2023 – January 28, 2024

The Arabia Art Department Society’s 20th-anniversary exhibition, “Northern Latitude 60.20890,” takes place at the Iittala & Arabia Design Centre, Helsinki. This exhibition features Finnish contemporary ceramics curated by New York-based gallerists Juliet Burrows and Kim Hostler. Additionally, the anniversary publication, “Arabia Art Department Society 20 Years,” sheds light on the significance of the Arabia Art Department Society from an international perspective and further explores the contents of the previously released “Muotokuvia” podcast for a broader audience.

The Arabia Art Department Society was founded on November 4, 2003, to preserve and develop the legacy of the Arabia Art Department that originated in the 1930s.

“The future of the Arabia Art Department, established as part of the Arabia ceramics factory in the 1930s, had been under consideration for some time. After much discussion, a proposal emerged to form a society that would serve as the new art department. The idea that was thrown in the air carried far-reaching implications,” says artist Pekka Paikkari, one of the founding members of the society.

This year marks the 20th anniversary of the founding of the Arabia Art Department Society. This period has seen various twists and turns, much like the long history of the Arabia Art Department. Its fate has been at stake several times over the decades, yet its gaze has been firmly fixed on the future. Perhaps its resilience lies in the artists of differing ages dreaming and envisioning solutions as a community.

The 20-year story of the society is celebrated in various ways, and the society’s artists, including Professor Heikki Orvola, Kati Tuominen-Niittylä, Pekka Paikkari, Kristina Riska, Heini Riitahuhta, Kim Simonsson, Jasmin Anoschkin, Caroline Slotte, Sakari Kannosto, and Marianne Huotari, are participating in the anniversary year.

The Arabia Art Department Society’s 20th-anniversary exhibition, “Northern Latitude 60.20890,” is on view through January 28, 2024. The coordinates of the exhibition lead to the Arabia district of Helsinki, at the Iittala & Arabia Design Centre, where the Arabia Art Department is located. The anniversary exhibition presents the latest works of the society’s artists. “The exhibition architecture extends from the Design Centre’s lobby to the museum for the first time. The visual design follows the graphic world of the anniversary publication, created by Aleksandra Niiranen,” says exhibition architect Päivi Niemi.

Curators for the exhibition are Juliet Burrows and Kim Hostler, specialists in Nordic design and contemporary ceramics, who lead two galleries in New York and one in Los Angeles. Kristina Riska, a member of the Arabia Art Department Society, was the first living artist they represented. They have since started collaborations with other artists from the society.

”To show the work of a living artist is a completely different act from presenting vintage work. To be able to impart some of the living energy of an artist by way of a personal relationship is transformative”, says Burrows, ”Arabia became instrumental in helping shape our contemporary program. To have such a wealth of artistic talent and inspired craft concentrated in one building was mindboggling.”

Curator Juliet Burrows has also written about the significance of the Arabia Art Department Society from an international perspective for the society’s anniversary publication, “Arabia Art Department Society 20 Years.” The book’s other texts are based on the “Portraits” podcast produced and hosted by writer and interior journalist Maaretta Tukiainen for the society’s anniversary year.

The publication articulates, documents and shares the industrial and artistic expertise and tacit knowledge that the Arabia Art Department has cultivated over the decades. Each artist’s podcast episode has its own chapter in English translation, allowing the material to reach an international audience. The book was edited and the texts were written by Elise Simonsson, with graphic design by Aleksandra Niiranen, translations by Rebecca Watson, and images primarily by Chikako Harada.

The book also introduces the JUHLAT collection, which honors the 20th anniversary of the Arabia Art Department Society and the 150th anniversary of Arabia. The jar designed by Heini Riitahuhta serves as a stand for the artworks of the society’s artists. The limited edition of 150 pieces was crafted at the premises of the Arabia Art Department in collaboration with ceramic artist Susanne Koskimäki. The anniversary exhibition also features the collection and a video depicting its production by Juho Länsiharju.

The anniversary publication is also displayed at the “Northern Latitude 60.20890” exhibition and in the window exhibition of the society’s main partner for the anniversary year, SEB (Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken), on Eteläesplanadi.

About the Arabia Art Department Society
Professors Heljä Liukko-Sundström and Heikki Orvola, Inkeri Leivo (1944-2010), Fujiwo Ishimoto, Kati Tuominen-Niittylä, Pekka Paikkari, Kristina Riska, and Heini Riitahuhta founded the Arabia Art Department Society on November 4, 2003.

The Guest Artist Program was initiated in 2004 and has included participants such as Kim Simonsson, Heikki Rahikainen, Caroline Slotte, Merja Haapala, Maija Vainonen, Jasmin Anoschkin, Aimo Katajamäki, Saana Murtti, Veera Kulju, Kalle Hamm & Dzamil Kamanger, Sakari Kannosto, Marianne Huotari, and Miikka Lommi.

Together with
Arabia Art Department Society’s 20th-anniversary main cooperation partner is SEB.

The Finnish Cultural Foundation and the Swedish Cultural Foundation in Finland support the publication and the anniversary exhibition.

The Muotokuvia (Portraits) podcast was supported by the Arts Promotion Centre Finland in 2022. The Muotokuvia (Portraits) podcast was produced for the Arabia Art Department Society by Moodit Oy.

The “Northern Latitude 60.20890” anniversary exhibition, the anniversary book, and the Visiting Artist Program are also supported by the Finnish Cultural Foundation and the Swedish Cultural Foundation.

The Arabia Art Department Society operates within the Iittala & Arabia Design Center, Arabia 135 – Creativity Block in Helsinki.

Contact
arabiaartdepartment@gmail.com

Iittala & Arabia Design Centre
Hämeentie 135A, 8th Floor
00560 Helsinki
Finland

Photos by Jefunne Gimpel