upcoming exhibition – Annabeth Rosen

by | Feb 6, 2017 | Uncategorized


Tie Me to the Mast 
February 16
–
March 18, 2017
Opening Reception: Thursday, February 16, 6-8 PM
P•P•O•W is pleased to present
Tie Me to the Mast,
a solo exhibition by Annabeth Rosen, a distinguished sculptor in the
community of West Coast ceramicists. Her work explores the fundamental
properties of
ceramics by directly confronting the aesthetic and chemical
relationships between sculptural form and painterly surface. Rosen’s
formally intuitive process is enabled by a complex understanding of
historical conventions, composite materials, and chemical properties,
placing her work in the tradition of experimental ceramicists including
Peter Voulkos, Betty Woodman, Linda Benglis, and Martin Puryear.
 
The
exhibition, her first with the gallery, will feature a series of
small-scale ceramic sculptures, elaborate organic forms that reveal
layer upon layer of clay,
glaze, and salt, fired using a ‘salt flux’ technique, which triggers a
self-glazing reaction. A signature innovation to this centuries-old
technique, through this process Rosen mixes surface chemistry into the
body of her work, creating a solid mass whose
glaze rises to the fore during the firing process. Rejecting historical
standards that distinguish decorative arts as ‘perfect’, Rosen’s
practice can be described as an effort to undermine established
conventions about an object’s merit, resulting in an extensive
body of work that embraces the challenges of a robust studio practice:
precarious balance, fissured surfaces, and accumulated fragments.
 
Among the works on view will be
Roil,
a large-scale sculptural work of individual ceramic forms, piled on top
of one another like layered gestures. Each individual piece is painted,
and together the work takes
on the effect of an abstract painting, ‘framed’ in a custom pedestal
made of metal. Pieced together, the work appears as if in motion, a
swirling, cascading form, seemingly driven by an inner velocity.
 
Rosen
describes the ceramic process for her as breaking down the barrier
between the visual and sensual. Her works invite not only an aesthetic
evaluation, but a
physical one as well. Creating works that appear as if caught in a
state of motion, the sculptures evoke a visceral response in the viewer,
inviting them to investigate the cracks and cervices visible on the
work’s surface. Interested in the way in which the
clay changes through being worked and formed, Rosen pushes the limits
of the material, building up works, firing them, adding new elements,
firing them again, and so on, exploiting the clay to create cracks in
the surface of the finished work that exposes
the nature of the materials.
 
“My
work represents a tally of touches that are informed by years of
deliberate working experience,” said Rosen. “My process may allude to a
desire to blur contemporary
experience into something timeless and familiar, like ceramics itself. I
engage in both recklessness and thoughtfulness at the same time,
embracing the awkward and the unfinished, the partial and the raw.”
 
Though
her works appear organic, found, or formed, masses of clay
un-heroically yielding to the weight of their material, Rosen’s work is
deliberate. Through the
process of creating her ceramic works, Rosen often breaks them, a
practice that she finds as interesting as the creation itself, as it
reveals the possibility and potency of a shard. She fires and re-fires
her work, interested in both the change in material
as the work accumulates mass, as well as the way the physical material
can be negotiated – its limits pushed, while simultaneously pushing the
limits of what a sculpture can be.
 
Born
in Brooklyn, New York, Rosen received her BFA from NYS State College of
Ceramics at Alfred University and her MFA from Cranbrook Academy of
Art. She was recently
announced as a 2016 recipient of a United States Artists fellowship.
She has been the Robert Arneson Endowed Chair at the University of
California Davis since 1997.  Rosen has taught at School of the Art
Institute of Chicago, Rhode Island School of Design,
Tyler School of Art and Bennington College. Rosen has received multiple
grants and awards, a Pew Fellowship, two National Endowment for the
Arts Fellowships, several UC Davis Research Grants, and a Joan Mitchell
Award for Painting and Sculpture. Rosen’s work
is in the collection of the LA County Museum of Art, The Oakland Museum
of Art, The Denver Art Museum, and The Everson Museum, as well as
public and private collections throughout the country.
Annabeth Rosen: Fired, Broken, Gathered, Heaped, Rosen’s first
major survey chronicling 20 years of her work in ceramics and drawing,
will open at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston in August of 2017. She
is represented by Anglim Gilbert Gallery
in San Francisco.
For images or additional information, please email Trey Hollis at
[email protected].
P•P•O•W
| 535 West 22nd St. 3rd Floor | New York, NY 10011 US |
ppowgallery.com

call for exhibition proposals NCECA

by | Dec 28, 2016 | Uncategorized

Prospectus For 2018 Concurrent Exhibition Proposals
DEADLINE: Wednesday, February 1, 2017 (EST)

52st ANNUAL NCECA CONFERENCE: CrossCurrents: Clay and Culture
Wednesday March 14 – Saturday, March 17, 2018
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Overview
The exhibition and expansion of
contemporary ceramic practice will include diverse approaches to ideas
and senses of materiality involving clay and process. NCECA’s annual
conference is enriched by the innovation and vision that emerges from
our community to present ceramic art of the highest caliber in the form
of Concurrent Exhibitions (CEs). These exhibitions make ceramic art
visible and accessible to communities in which the conference is based.
Concurrent Exhibitions also provide a platform for participating artists
to engage with the global audience of ceramic enthusiasts to expand,
challenge, and celebrate critical and aesthetic horizons of art made
with clay. NCECA promotes Concurrent Exhibitions through the print
conference guide, app, website, Blog and social media. While NCECA makes
efforts to cluster the shows within art/ cultural districts to maximize
viewer attendance, it is not able to guarantee that all exhibition
venues will be included on tour routes.

2018 Exhibitions Focus
NCECA seeks exhibition proposals
that incorporate clay as the principal medium of expression and have
conceptual resonance with the theme of its 52nd annual conference, CrossCurrents: Clay and Culture.
The conference will take place in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in March
2018. Cross-currents within Pittsburgh’s three rivers are traversed by
446 bridges. These natural and cultural features are vibrant metaphors
for the intersectionality, significance, and experience of different
cultural constructs. Traditions and innovations coexist throughout the
ceramic medium’s history. Our creative work with ceramic art in the 21st
century can be a catalyst to generate dialog and empathy. When art
grapples with change through underrepresented ideas, new models of
creating, teaching, and learning, it has the capacity to crystalize
experiences of diversity and notions of community. Through these
exhibitions, NCECA hopes to share and promote innovative approaches to
ceramic art that explore and highlight the experiences of diverse
cultures within a dynamic society. 

http://nceca.net/concurrent-exhibition-proposals/

Laurent Craste @ Art Gallery of Burlington

by | Nov 26, 2016 | Uncategorized

Craste’s 13 new works examine the notion of aesthetics in the
decorative arts, specifically the shift from ornaments to what is now
seen as the clean aesthetics of design.

About the Artist
Ceramist by trade, Laurent Craste is an internationally renowned visual
artist whose practice focuses on the exploration of the multiple layers
of meaning of decorative objects: ideologically, aesthetically, and
through their sociological and historical dimensions. The porcelain
vase, in particular, has for years been the subject of predilection of
the artist’s work. Laurent Craste appropriates this archetypal figure of
decorative arts, using it as matter, support and playground for his
artistic interventions, in order to create striking formal and
conceptual proposals.

Laurent Craste holds a Master in Visual and Media Arts from UQAM, and
he was awarded numerous prizes and awards during his career. His works
are on display in numerous private and public collections (Montreal
Museum of Fine Arts, the Public Collection of the Department of Foreign
Affairs and International Trade of Canada, The Cirque du Soleil
Collection, etc.).

Image: Laurent Craste, Immolation, 2016

artgalleryofburlington.com

Virginia McClure Ceramic Biennale: Épisode

by | Oct 21, 2016 | Uncategorized

• Phoebe Cummings, Benjamin DeMott, Janet Macpherson, Meghan Smythe. Curator: Linda Swanson •
 
Vernissage : Thursday, October 27, 2016 at 6 pm
Exhibition : October 28 to November 26
Artists and Curator Exchange: Friday, October 28 at 7 pm

Épisode is curated by invited artist/curator Linda Swanson.
The exhibition features four artists whose works speak not only to
excellence and innovation in ceramics, but to its relevance as a
discipline that allows for a specifically corporeal, embodied
articulation of contemporary human experience. Swanson’s choice of
artists — Phoebe Cummings (Stafford, UK), Benjamin DeMott (Chicago,
U.S.), Janet Macpherson (Toronto, Canada) and Meghan Smythe (Los
Angeles, U.S.) — has resulted in an inspiring, materially seductive
exhibition. Indeed, there is something collectively subversive about
their work – subversive in the sense of undermining staid narratives,
restrictive tropes, or assumptions about our perceived reality. Each
artist recognizes the historical heritage of ceramics, yet offers a
highly original and imaginatively provocative vision. Épisode is the second of five biennales taking place between 2014 and 2022.

Gallery Hours: Tuesday to Friday 12 pm to 6 pm; Saturday 12 pm to 5 pm
[email protected]
www.visualartscentre.ca/mcclure-gallery/exhibitions/current-exhibition/