Justin Novak
Title: Disfigurine
Ceramic’s residual historical value is set on a very traditional, conservative and westernised model, and Novak’s sculpture is a vehicle to unpick and destabilise its austere solidity. ‘Disfigurine’ evokes classical female figurative representation with its use of a simple white porcelain and ornamental plinth, but depicts a darker act of self-harm as scissors are brandished to precisely incise a deep cut into the models wrist. Novak seeks to make a political statement on artistic beauty and order often meeting precisely at a point of deep unrest, and at greater overall cost to social responsibility.
Title: True Love
Novak’s “disfigurines” reposition the historical context that ceramic classically retains — investing in a traditional western, bourgeois perspective and then subverting it to introduce a fresh and often haunting model. ‘True Love’ finds sentimentality at a difficult axis, the central form stripped of any notion of decoration or presentation for a simple, rough block of clay — the peeking rodent implying a gutter or trench cutting through. Two figures, male and female, stand split by the gulf; separated but in tune.
Hieronymus was established as an online gallery in 2014 to showcase the collection of the Richard and Alita Rogers Family Foundation.
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