Ceramics

Notkin’s talent for smaller scale sculptural depiction is evident in the model-like 'Monumentally Earthbound III'. His dramatic and often humorously spiky subjects revolt against sentimentality, gesturing towards the political and social turmoil that underpins contemporary society. Notkin's zeal for the subject translates to an obsessive committal to detail, the reduced scale & precise rendering of 'Monumentally Earthbound’s pyramid conveying remarkable architectural detail, a simple glaze allowing the natural tonality of the porcelain to present itself. The pyramid appears constantly in Notkin’s work, having first surfaced in his long series of teapots that looked to surreal shapes and symbols for a functional recontextualising.

Takeuzu’s ceramics explore closed cylindrical or spherical vessels, so called “moons” that explore the interior and exterior surface and form poetic mirrored relationships to the body — often resembling or closely inferring the heart or soul-as-organ, and particularly reinforced by the inclusion of a small bead of clay wrapped in paper before sealing to rattle around in the interior space. This jar is sealed a slightly squat form, its surface treated for a depth of texture in firing — then finished with a cobalt glaze.

‘Mosquito’ is typical of Feng Shu’s interest in capturing the likeness of insects in porcelain — a relationship that the artist tracks back to growing up under China’s One Child Policy, and the loneliness culminating in time spent outside looking for insects to amuse him. The work is particularly sharp and balanced, the ceramic defying typical limits and delicate boundaries to reflect the fragility and needle-like keenness of the insect. A green patterned print adds a decorative complexity, and the steel and overall stature of the object — scaling up the insect significantly —suggests some kind of mutational or science-fiction-like evolution.

Peruvian artist Alzamora is drawn to warping, distorting or mutating the human figure to pull out significant emotional or biological resonances. ‘Mother & Child’ is from a series of pieces that uses white porcelain and features a similar expression — the form of mother and child, carefully rendered, with the surreal and oddly dark obscuration of the head with flowers, strips of cloth or vines. The subtle accents of pink naturally draw focus in, and a stern or impassive expression peeks through. What might otherwise be elegant or beautiful takes on a more mysterious and complex stance. Alzamora examines the ecstasies and agonies of life through a careful process in which a material’s potential will inform his response — a position as assistant at the Polich Tallix foundry in New York bestowing him with an intimate knowledge of technique.

Recognising the fluid structure and sense of movement held in flesh even as it is stricken from the bone, artist Dryden Wells utilises the form and de-familiarised structure of pieces of meat for strange modular arrays — ordering or stacking these animal parts through a multitude of shifting casts that begin to coalesce into a larger arrangement of space and shoal or colony-like relationship. With “Stack 6” Wells seems to take a pleasure in re-structuring an animal profile from the constituent parts, the silhouette and sloping migration of ceramic elements reminiscent of any quadrupedal muscle structure — a simple layer of glaze over one node outlining the ‘head’ and bringing the creature into focus.

Dryden Well’s use of meat or animal parts lends his sculpture an uncanny presence — the biological forms destabilised by a residual abstraction and odd purveying comedy in the value of use of such odd source material. The kinetics of “Movement Stack 8” seem bound to the structural dynamics of muscle (and in direct conflict with the natural solidity of the clean ceramic casts), exploiting the sense of compressed energy conveyed in the wings in a repeated sequence to create a pouncing movement even in stasis.

“Moving Landscape”s collapsing of colour and form is a lively defamation of how space and representation convey intent, the minds restless search for orientation finding a slippery language of land in the twisted surface of Chun’s object. The title acts as a key to unlocking unseen imagery in the kaleidoscope of glaze and iridescent luster, and an elemental order nested in the format of the clay remains even when it is stretched, distorted and covered far beyond its original means.

Provenance : Rochester Art Center, Rochester Minnesota

Dahl chooses to refine the soft white clay of her pottery through hours of sanding and a delicate preservation of fine edges and sharp points, and the soothing effect of the process is caught in the cleanliness and ‘material truth’ of "My Flower”. The ascending complexity in terms of the biological motifs finds inspiration from the botanist Karl Blossfelt, and captures the same mix of scientific and aesthetic delight as his photographs of highly magnified pollens, flowers and seeds.