Ceramics

'ISICHAPUITU (MELANCHOLY, FLAKY, NETA, Peruvian Kukuli Velarde makes work indebted to folk tradition and traditional ornamentation, exploring the new politics of identity, estrangements of context and acts of “forgetfulness” that occur as art is displaced from its origin. ‘Entangled’ is cut from a series of works exploring memory, fear, desire and ideology through figurative icons that, in tandem, present a larger picture of the artists identity and belief in a shared system of traits. The snake rears in appearance over several of these figures in the “Isichapuitu” series as Velarde — albeit here a transformed, mythic vision of the serpent — and surrounds the figure in a suffocating, controlling mass. ENTANGLED, CULEBREANDO), 1998-2001 glazed earthenware each 24 in. (61 cm.) high (5) Sheboygan, Kohler Arts Center, Kukuli Velarde: Cantaros de Vida (The Isichapuitu Series), 2002.

Saxe fixes his objects with the witty rejoinder, indirectly refiguring objective purpose to warp the viewer’s or user’s perspective on why tradition might endure. “Ewer (Clear Face Gothic Extra Bold Ampersand)” is from a series that finds the silhouettes of a teapot in typeset, the reflection of form a dry observation on object emphasis in typographic iconography, and a continuation of Saxe’s skill for perfect craft in unexpected and asymmetrical structures. The sharp geometric angles of Clear Face Extra Bold offer a particularly opposing force to the gentle curvature and classically decorative styling of the pot’s handle and spout, the diagonal structure of the ampersand body fusing with the texture of the porcelain but bluntly refusing its form — making the signature “cactus” lid look even more displaced.

‘Novitate’ echoes Jeck’s common interest in early historical figures, using multi-media technique to perform life-like renderings with a nested authority, influence and residual ‘early’ quality. Here the title jostles with representation, “novitate" translating into “newness” or “novelty” and the bust having seemingly been caught in an unhealthy state of mummification, the deathly pallor and creeping signs of dust and decay (exemplified in Jeck’s neat usage of a fraying and discoloured lace) suggesting early scholarly brightness trapped in an uneasy perpetuity.

This large dark glimmering oval moon looks different in pattern and coloration from every angle. If lifted and shaken, it rattles with the soft sound of a small clay pellet within, something the artist occasionally hid in a closed form shape to enliven it with a seed thought or a poem.

A European sensibility remains in Toubes’ practice even after two decades spent in the US, the ghostly figurative presence in ‘Exquisite Nomads Head’ remarkably classical for so light a set of features. Roughly worked into shape with palms, the clay has had seemingly random patchworks of colour applied in smeared, rainbowed clusters to vivid and shocking effect — allegorical to messes of plasticine or melted ice cream.

Satiral, gaudy; the work of Russell Biles has as much in common with a cheap souvenir as a sculptural artefact — levelling culture to take even swipes at celebrity, religion and politics. ‘Billary' riffs on the inseparable identity of the clintons, the slip cast figure literally joining the two as a totemic icon (traditionally emblematic of a specific tribe) hilst simultaneously suggesting that one is forever wearing the other as a token of identification.

Earl’s hand-built ceramics concentrate on descriptive scenario, utilising landscape or building as an environment for laying out a storyline. Often focused on a recurring character named “Bill” and a likeness of rural Americana, Earl juxtaposes scenes with the romance and highly wrought fantasy of rococo porcelain, balancing folkiness with a sensual grandeur in a manner that often seems faintly surreal. The three-dimensional complexity of this work is typical

Early glazed and painted ceramic sculpture of a fish on a plate, Seattle, WA, 1970s; Signed; Total: 20" x 14" x 5"

Among the many bodies of work created by Lucero in the 1980's, his most subtle were his "bug and fish" series from the mid 1980's. Taking the form of an actual creature and surfacing it with his amazing matte glazed imagery and then surrounding the edge of the creature with black, these works, mainly exhibited at the Everson Museum in Syracuse New York have a classicism that overwhelmed the viewer. This piece is a prime example of that body of work that would never be repeated as the years went on. Lucero’s “Bug & Fish” series of the 1980s takes the specific creature — formalised in clay — and projects subtle or detailed matte glaze miniatures along its surface in a lively combination of sculptural and figurative painting. The results of this process graduate to become more authoritatively lucid and surreal as multiple surfaces and increasingly alien forms are rendered, but “Flea” still holds a tactile and inquisitive delight in its relative simplicity and vestige of truth to nature in each separate element, the painting rather elegantly framed by the thorax of the insect.

Artist Takashi Hinoda uses his ceramics to convey a hybrid of japanese manga, anime and comic-like intensity and stop-motion in wrenched, corrupted form.  ‘Anime’s odd shape could be animal or mineral, irregular protuberances and curves aping landscape and body contours equally. The freckled texture of the ceramic and cartoon skin tone is mutable, Hinoda increasingly drawn to the tonality as a representation of organic form after violent gas attacks in the subways of Japan in 1995 brought human fallibility into a national consciousness. An array of spheres covering the surface are painted to embody characters — the playful range of emotions picked out by careful two-dimensional embellishment that seeks to vacillate between surface and sculpture.

Marchand leaves much of her work’s identity to audience interpretation, but her monochromatic surfaces have been carefully refined to be particularly sensitive to interplays of light and shadow — the work seeming to elicit a striking sensory reaction from such devotional attention to sophisticated material qualities. in “Folds XIX”, the boundaries of clay are massaged and re-proportioned so that the substance seems to have been transmogrified, becoming silken and gently folding like a sheet of cloth — and with the suggestion that a brief contact could entirely redistribute the creases and ruffled layers.