Published in 2021 by Racine Art Museum, Racine, WI
Contents:
20-page, full-color exhibition catalog
$5.00
ABOUT FACE: Contemporary Ceramic Sculpture explores the lineage and influence between the revolutionary first generation of artists working in the figural genre and contemporary artists. The exhibition, curated by Jennifer Jankauskus, will investigate how history and place inform the work of contemporary ceramists bringing approximately 44 objects by 30 emerging, mid-career, and master artists from around the nation who work within a narrative figurative clay tradition. Creating both sculptural and relief objects, from busts to full figures, the artists all highlight the human form as a way to explore issues relating to the body, to various cultural ties, and to ideas of the female/male gaze.
Images courtesy of Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, Art Museum of South Texas, and Figge Art Museum
Wesley Anderegg
Robert Arneson*
Chris Antemann*
Rudy Autio*
Russell Biles*
Cristina Córdova*
Jack Earl*
Edward Eberle*
Sean Erwin*
Viola Frey*
Alessandro Gallo*
David Gilhooly *
Gerit Grimm *
Sergei Isupov*
Doug Jeck*
Howard Kottler*
Michael Lucero *
Walter McConnell
Gerardo Monterrubio
Jim Neel
Virgil Ortiz
Andrew Raftery
Allan Rosenbaum
Akio Takimori *
Yoshio Taylor
Tip Toland
Jason Walker *
Kurt Weiser *
Beatrice Wood *
Sun Koo Yuh
*indicates artists with available works for sale through Ferrin Contemporary
Curator Talk: Dr. Jennifer Jankauskas
Thursday, July 16
6:30 p.m. Virtual
Curator of Art at the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, and exhibition curator Dr. Jennifer Jankauskas, will discuss the artists and themes exhibited in About Face in a virtual presentation.
View Virtual Curator Talk • HERE •
Artist Panel
Thursday, August 20
6:30 p.m. talk
Local ceramic artists will give insight into the imagery and techniques used in the works featured in About Face.
About Face is accompanied by a full-color catalogue with essays by exhibition curator, Jennifer Jankauskas, PhD, and Glenn Adamson, Senior Scholar at the Yale Center for British Art and will be on view in the fourth-floor gallery through August 30, 2020.
From raw textures to meticulous details, to glazes bursting with color, the works in Cool Clay represent one of the most exciting and expansive fields of contemporary art. This exhibition highlights a selection of notable acquisitions that strengthen the Crocker Art Museum’s ceramics holdings in both diversity and scope. These pieces represent the work of influential figures such as Rudy Autio, Jun Kaneko, Tony Marsh, Edwin Scheier, Nancy Selvin, and Akio Takamori, as well as more recent leaders like Peter Olson, Zemer Peled, Brian Rochefort, and Dirk Staschke. Although the artists pursue a great variety of approaches and techniques, each embraces the experimental and playful sensibility this versatile medium engenders. Spanning six decades of studio practice, this exhibition celebrates the ground-breaking achievements of 20th-century ceramists as well as those who today continue to reimagine the possibilities of working in clay.
Read more on the Crocker’s blog, the Oculus, HERE.
Exhibiting Artists:
Anthony Bennett, Claude Conover, Annette Corcoran, Viola Frey, David Gilhooly, Babs Haenen, Matthias Merkel Hess, Anne Hirondelle, Sergei Isupov, Cliff Lee, Ah Leon, Whitney Lowe, Kris Lyons, Calvin Ma, Mineo Mizuno, Steven Montgomery, Peter Olson, Edwin Scheier, Nancy Selvin, Peter Shire, Mara Superior, Akio Takamori, Claudia Tarantino, Cheryl Ann Thomas, Peter VandenBerge,
Learn more about FC Artists:
and from the archives:
September 27–November 4, 2018 at Ferrin Contemporary
Ferrin Contemporary is pleased to present Canary Syndrome, a group show featuring recent works by U.S. and U.K.-based artists including Elizabeth Alexander, Evan Hauser, Elliott Kayser, Stephen Young Lee, Beth Lipman, Livia Marin, Paul Scott, Bouke de Vries, and Jason Walker, on view Sept. 27 to Nov. 4. An opening reception will be held at Ferrin Contemporary, located at 1315 MASS MoCA Way, on Sept. 27, from 5 to 7 p.m., in conjunction with DownStreet Art, a program of Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts’ Berkshire Cultural Resources Center. The reception is free and open to the public.
The exhibition, inspired by the saying “canary in the coal mine”, suggests that artists, much like the caged canaries once used by coal miners as early indicators of dangerous gases in tunnels, are hypersensitive to the adverse conditions and forces that jeopardize human existence. Through their artwork, the artists in Canary Syndrome employ visual means to accentuate threats to the health of the environment, culture, and ethics — really, the condition of civilization in general, and to warn of worse things to come.
The now-discontinued practice of carrying canaries deep into coal mines to detect carbon monoxide and other toxic gases dates back to 1911. The phrase “canary in the coal mine” is widely used as an allusion by whistleblowers sounding an early alert for broken systems and dangerous conditions. Al Gore used the phrase in reference to indicators of global warming in his book and film, “An Inconvenient Truth: The Planetary Emergency of Global Warming and What We Can Do About It”. The planet’s “canaries”, Gore said, are the melting polar icecaps, a result of increasing levels of carbon monoxide in the atmosphere.
“Ferrin Contemporary is presenting Canary Syndrome as both an opportunity to reflect upon fragile beauty as well as provide inspiration to fellow travelers who are facing an overwhelming sense of antipathy and futility in our world today,” said Gallery Director Leslie Ferrin. “It’s our hope that art and artists will motivate others and help to fuel a societal call to action.”
The diverse and thought-provoking artworks in the exhibition invoke ominous portents and herald a call for change on a global level. The works of Elizabeth Alexander, Elliot Kayser, Steven Young Lee, Beth Lipman, Livia Marin, Paul Scott, and Bouke de Vries explore the concept of the flaw, the crack, the mistake, and the resulting debris, within the delicate world of ceramics and fragile glass.
De Vries’s glass cloud is an assemblage of shards of glass from recognizable broken objects, forming a 21-inch-high mushroom cloud. Kayser uses glaze “blisters” on black cow figurines and Scott repurposes a 19th-century platter with the addition of a photo collage of Houston that memorializes Hurricane Harvey’s rising waters. Alexander, Lee, Lipman, and Marin work with processes that exploit melting, etching, breakage, and erasing to produce metaphoric imagery that is often a harbinger of doom. The artists reference forms and history associated with familiar domestic objects such as plates and figurines, along with pottery shards, to reveal something new, carrying a foreboding warning.
Artists in the exhibition who use imagery to deliver their message include Evan Hauser, whose use of ceramic decal prints of Hudson River School paintings applied to Styrofoam cooler lids, cast in porcelain, reexamines historic and cultural scenes in a contemporary context. Jason Walker explores the consequences of manifest destiny, referencing the inherent conflict between man and nature, with meticulous illustrations painted on porcelain sculptures of birds and fish, which he has combined with cast porcelain machine parts made from gears, conduit, and aerators, and used as formal elements.
“The very act of creating provides these artists with an outlet for the anxiety caused by relentless exposure to contemporary conflicts,” said Ferrin. “They are compelled to address environmental and societal issues through their practice and are sounding the alarm in the form of beautiful and compelling pieces of art.”
For more information about the exhibition and individual artists, see ferrincontemporary.com
Elizabeth Alexander
Evan Hauser
Elliott Kayser
Stephen Young Lee
Beth Lipman
Livia Marin
Paul Scott
Bouke de Vries
Jason Walker
Recently on view:
Elizabeth Alexander’s A Mightier Work is Ahead Series displayed in the Entrance Hall of the Wickham House at the Valentine Museum, Richmond, VA, 2024
Elizabeth Alexander
“A Mightier Work is Ahead”
2022
hand-cut found porcelain, dust, glass, cork, gold leaf, and brass
13” x 8” x 1” (each)
The title is paraphrased after a Frederick Douglas quote from OUR WORK IS NOT DONE, a speech delivered at the annual meeting of the American Anti-Slavery Society held at Philadelphia, December 3-4, 1863.
But a mightier work than the abolition of slavery now looms up before the Abolitionist. – When we have taken the chains off the slave, as I believe we shall do, we shall find a harder resistance to the second purpose of this great association than we have found even upon slavery itself.
“For the great enemy of truth is very often not the lie — deliberate, contrived, and dishonest — but the myth — persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic.”
– John F. Kennedy
Elizabeth Alexander
“The Great Enemy of Truth”
2019
hand-cut set of Confederate commemorative porcelain plates, paper packaging, glass, wood, brass wall mounts
260 x 60 x 5″
In The Great Enemy of Truth, I edited a full set of Confederate commemorative plates and packaging by extracting the Confederate symbols, leaving only the American landscape between the voids. The dust and text from each removal was harvested and is displayed below its plate of origin to show that history cannot be erased; there is still a residue.
b. 1982 in Natick, MA
lives in Amesbury MA, works in Beverly, MA
Elizabeth Alexander is an interdisciplinary artist specializing in sculptures and installations made from deconstructed domestic materials. Through labored processes separating decorative print from found objects she unearths elements of human behavior and hidden emotional lives that exist within the walls of our homes. She holds degrees in sculpture from the Cranbrook Academy, MFA, and Massachusetts College of Art, BFA, where she discovered the complex nature of dissecting objects of nostalgia. Alexander’s work has recently been featured in the 2019 Burke Prize Finalist exhibition at the Museum of Art and Design, and will be featured in Paper Routes, Women to Watch 2020 at the National Museum of Women in the Arts and is included in permanent collections at the Crystal Bridges Museum in Bentonville, AR and the Mint Museum in Charlotte, NC. She is currently an Associate Professor at the UNC School of the Arts.
Channeling neurosis and anxiety into busywork, menial tasks, and fussing over trivial duties, I pacify doubt with reverie. Meditating on the private and public nature of homemaking, trend following, and general beautification, exaggerations of taste-making unearth human behavior and emotion through manipulations of the stuff of our recent past. I trifle with relics of the American Dream to uncover antiquated ideals and promises through an endless process of deconstruction and reconstruction, counterfeits and edits.
Obsession, repetition, and labor function as both a subject and a method to break down forgotten findings of domestic investment and recondition the parts into non-utilitarian patterned indulgences. Appropriating discarded materials such as decorative wallpaper, architectural embellishments, furniture, images from coffee table books, and porcelain tableware, I cultivate and tarnish decoration and its domestic application. These attempts to find and display good taste unmask the tragic, comic, ephemeral, and irrational characteristics of a self-conscious society. My findings on this quest for domestic perfection visualize the cost and absurdity of social climbing through material veils.
Ferrin Contemporary presents Paul Scott in “Our America/Whose America?”. Installation for NCECA Richmond, 2024 at the Wickham House at The Valentine Museum, Richmond, VA. Image courtesy of The Valentine Museum.
2024 | Group Exhibition in the Wickham House at the Valentine Museum | Richmond, VA
February 20, 2024 – April 21, 2024
Our America/Whose America? Is a “call and response” exhibition between contemporary artists and historic ceramic objects.
Ferrin Contemporary “Our America/Whose America?” Entrance Hall Installation at the Wickham House, Richmond, VA, 2024
Our America/Whose America?, Elizabeth Alexander, A Mightier Work is Ahead Series, 2022, image courtesy of John Polak
2022 | Ferrin Contemporary | North Adams, MA
Our America/Whose America? Is a “call and response” exhibition between contemporary artists and historic ceramic objects.
Elizabeth Alexander, Canary Syndrome, 2018 Installation, photo by John Polak Photography
2018 | Group Exhibition at Ferrin Contemporary | North Adams, MA
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Second Mountaindale Biennale
Art Exhibition
62 Main Street, Mountaindale, NY
Reception: Saturday, July 14, 12 to 4 p.m.
Open: Sunday, July 15, 12 to 4 p.m., and by appointment through September 3, 2018.
For more information, contact: raymon@elozua.com or call 212.260.1239.
Pas à Vendre Production presents the second Mountaindale Biennale: Made in Mountaindale II, featuring recent work by Micheline Gingras and Raymon Elozua, two active artists in the small hamlet of Mountaindale, part of the old “Borscht Belt” in the Catskills.
Micheline Gingras presents a body of collages driven by the anxiety and fear found within the politics of mainstream media. Sourcing her material from The New York Times, Gingras creates images that compress disparate worlds to heighten emotions, revealing theatrical tableaux of reality. Gingras uses visual imagery to address, head-on, the surreal nightmare and confusion of contemporary “news.”
Raymon Elozua presents a new series of sculptures and photographs from his “Hubris” series that explore the loss of vision. Starting with richly colored “blurry” photographs that hint of sculptural objects; the vivid colors meld into one another creating a foggy sense of atmosphere. These images provide context for the corresponding and contrasting sculptures, made of steel and ceramic, inspired by each photograph.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS:
Micheline Gingras (b.1947, Québec City, QC) is a visual artist focusing primarily on painting, drawing, and photography. She received her MFA from L’école des Beaux-Arts de Québec, moving to New York in 1970. She has shown extensively including solo exhibitions at the Musée National des Beaux-Arts du Québec, the Musée d’Art Contemporain de Montréal, and participated in group exhibitions at the Yale University Gallery and the BRIC House in Brooklyn, N.Y., among others. For 37 years, Gingras taught art at St. Ann’s School in Brooklyn, and now divides her time between the city and Mountaindale.
Raymon Elozua (b.1947, West Germany) is a visual artist, working extensively in sculpture and photography. His interest in history, labor, and industry has sparked numerous multimedia web projects including VanishingCatskills.com and LostLabor.com — Images of Vanished American Workers from 1900–1980. Elozua has received numerous grants and awards including three National Endowment for the Arts Awards, a New York State Foundation for the Arts in Ceramics, and, most recently, a Virginia A. Groot Foundation Grant. Exhibitions include a 2003 retrospective at the Mint Museum of Art, and group exhibitions at the Museum of Art and Design and Skidmore College among others. Elozua lives and works in Mountaindale.
FROM NYC: Take George Washington Bridge upper level to Palisades Pkwy (first exit off bridge). As you near end of Palisades Pkwy, stay on left and exit for Rte. 6. which proceeds into a traffic circle. Follow circle and signs for Rte.6 (Rte. 6 goes over a small mountain.) Stay straight and follow signs to Rte.17. Rte. 6 essentially turns into Rte. 17. (approx. 30 min.) Follow Rte. 17 past exit for Wurtsboro/ Ellenville Rte. 209. Exit 112 is about 3 miles down the road saying Mountaindale. Exit on right. (approx. 30 min.) Turn left at T intersection after exit and turn left again at next immediate tee intersection, which is Wurtsboro Mountain Rd. (County Rd. 176) (Sign for Mountaindale). Follow this road about 1.2 miles to first major intersection, which is a Tee-intersection. (Sign for Mountaindale) You can only turn right on County Rd. 56 (Masten Lake Rd) which turns into New Rd. Follow this road about 8 miles until you come to the end of this road at a tee intersection & a stop light in front of Anderman Oil. Turn right. This is Main St. Follow 3 blocks downtown. Go past abandoned school on right, then karate school and bar on right. Opposite the bar is our gallery at 62 Main Street. 6 buildings down from bar, there will be a narrow driveway between 2 buildings on right. Go down driveway and park in lot on your right. Our building is 29 Main St., a free-standing building. (approx. 20 min.)
FROM KINGSTON: Take Route 209 to Ellenville. Follow Rte. 209 through Ellenville. about 2 miles down the road is an exit for Spring Glen. Turn right and follow road (Old Rte. 209) until you cross a small bridge. (approx. 60 min.) After the bridge is a tee intersection, turn right. This is Spring Glen Rd. which turns into Mountaindale Rd. (approx. 10 min.) Follow road for 8 miles. You will enter Mountaindale. My studio is at 1 Main St. and the gallery is one block down at 62 Main St.
This catalog was published on the occasion of the exhibition “Constructing Elozua: A Retrospective, 1973–2003” organized by the Mint Museum of Craft + Design, Charlotte, North Carolina, and presenting the work of sculptor Raymon Elozua.
Foreword by Mark Richard Leach
Essays by Garth Clark, Melissa G. Post, and Edward Leffingwell
126 full-color pages
$40
Click to see more of Elozua’s work.
Bouke de Vries’ contemporary interpretation of the decorative sculptures that adorned 17th- and 18th-century banqueting tables.
War & Pieces is an eight-meter (26-foot) installation by Dutch-born artist Bouke de Vries inspired by the sophisticated figural centerpieces that decorated eighteenth-century European rulers’ banqueting tables. Displayed during the dessert course on special occasions, these figures first made of sugar and later increasingly porcelain, told stories or conveyed political messages to the diners.
Bouke de Vries draws on such traditions in his modern centerpiece, arranged around the mushroom cloud from a nuclear explosion whose force appears to have turned the entire table into a wasteland. Battle rages across this heap of shards old and new, fought by myriad miniature figures with conventional arms. Jesus on the cross and the Chinese Buddhist goddess of compassion, Guanyin, watch over the death and destruction.
Click image at left to view catalog online.
Click to see more of de Vries work.
April 28–July 22, 2018
Ferrin Contemporary
1315 MASS MoCA Way, North Adams, MA
RECEPTION & DEMONSTRATION
Saturday April 28, 4-6 pm
Ferrin Contemporary presents DIRECTIONS: Sergei Isupov, the first exhibition in a series in which the gallery will shine focus on artists whose recent work captures a transitional moment in their creative process. The DIRECTIONS series shows results from technical experimentation and explores the development of new installation concepts.
First to be presented is work by Sergei Isupov, whose sculpture titled Directions, inspired the series. A larger-than-life, authoritarian figure, the sculpture points towards a group of the artist’s smaller porcelain works which explore a range of ideas leading in new directions. Isupov, an established sculptor based in Cummington, MA, and Tallinn, Estonia, is world known for his surrealistic, figure-ground personal narratives which simultaneously integrate painted imagery and dimensional surfaces.
SPRING OPENING BUILDING 13 EVENTS
At the opening reception on April 28, from 4–6 p.m., the artist will demonstrate his figure-ground painting technique and discuss the new directions explored in his recent works. This public event takes place during the Spring Building 13 Open House on the MASS MoCA campus and is part of ArtWeek, a statewide program highlighting the importance of supporting the arts in Massachusetts. ArtWeek takes place April 27–May 6.
In conjunction with ARTWEEK in Massachusetts
April 27–May 6, 2018
Sergei Isupov is an Estonian-American sculptor internationally known for his highly detailed, narrative works. Isupov explores painterly figure-ground relationships, creating surreal sculptures with a complex artistic vocabulary that combines two- and three-dimensional narratives and animal/human hybrids. He works in ceramic using traditional hand building and sculpting techniques to combine surface and form with narrative painting using stains and clear glaze.
“Everything that surrounds and excites me is automatically processed and transformed into an artwork. The essence of my work is not in the medium or the creative process, but in the human beings and their incredible diversity. When I think of myself and my works, I’m not sure I create them, perhaps they create me.”
Isupov has a long international resume with work included in numerous collections and exhibitions, including the National Gallery of Australia, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (TX), Museum of Arts and Design (NY), Racine Art Museum (WI), Museum of Fine Arts Boston (MA), and the Erie Art Museum (PA), at which he presented selected works in a 20-year career survey Hidden Messages in 2017 and Surreal Promenade in 2019 at the Russian Museum of Art (MN).
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