Installation view Sample Platter - Contemporary Ceramic, February 3 - March 15, 2020, Chapman University’s Guggenheim Gallery, Orange, CA
Sample Platter - Contemporary Ceramic
Silvie Auvrey, Mary Beyerle, Joshua Callaghan, Armando G Cortés, Michael Dopp, Kiko Fukazawa, Phyllis Green, Roger Herman, Orr Herz, Dave Kiddie, Jasmine Little, Emily Marchand, Tony Marsh, Simphiwe Mbunyuza, Jude Pauli, Roni Shneior, Emily Sudd, Tam Van Tran, Shoshi Watanabe, Pilar Wiley
February 3 - March 15, 2020
Chapman University’s Guggenheim Gallery, Orange, CA
Antibodies, 2020; Essay
Sample Platter shows the work of 20 artists investigating the medium of ceramics. Experienced ceramicists who have been exploring the matter and material for years and sometimes decades are represented as well as artists who recently began working in clay or consider ceramics an extension of their practice. The appeal of ceramics can be seen in the viscerality of sculpting and in that it appears crisp and direct even when it has been technically refined and perfected; from treating the clay body and firing it to the final glazing, ceramics offers a great extent of chance and surprise, subtle variations of the limited parameters considered during the process generate myriads of phenotypes.
Throughout human history this most basic material has been used to produce usable utensils on the one hand and to create sculptures and artistic objects on the other. Situated at the interstices of technical perfection and intuitive improvisation, conceptual rigor and organic shaping, the works show some of the many current facets of one of the oldest artistic media. The Exhibition gathers over 90 objects expressing this multiplicity of form and purpose.