KATHLEEN RYAN

Jack Hanley Gallery in New York is currently hosting a four person group show, titled Spieltrieb, featuring the works of Polly Apfelbaum, Beverly Fishman, Ryan Mrozowski and Kathleen Ryan. On view through February 4th, the show is a clever display of painting, sculpture and site specific installation.

According the gallery, It’s title, “Spieltrieb comes from the German expression that can be translated as ‘play-drive’, the ‘urge to play’ or ‘play impulse’. In ‘On the Aesthetic Education of Man’ (1794) German poet and philosopher Friedrich Schiller described Spieltrieb as the ideal union of Formtrieb (the form impulse) and Stofftrieb (the sense impulse). In his theory, the sense impulse equals life whereas the form impulse equates with shape and therefore denotes the object of Spieltrieb as the living shape which for him is synonymous with beauty. All works in the show combine these components, formal and sensuous, with a game element, a playfulness, inviting viewers to engage with their associations.”

With the notion of Spieltrieb in mind, the work interacts with the viewer’s urge to play in a multitude of ways. Polly Apfelbaum’s hanging installation of terra-cotta shapes evoke childrens’ mobile sets while Ryan Mrozowski’s sculptural paintings fit together as a jigsaw puzzle would. Through elevated color palettes and textural effects, the show comes together as a veritable playground for the creatively inclined. Each artist utilizes minimal design to maximum effect with elegant forms and bold color choices. Kathleen Ryan’s work is perhaps the most recognizable, using bright orange chains and bowling balls to create a massive tasseled necklace on the ground of the gallery, begging the question, do we ever outgrow the urge to play? —Jessica Ross

Spieltrieb brings together four unique artists who all have a penchant for originality and keen artist sense. Be sure to check it out in the lower east side before it closes on February 4th, 2018.

Ross, Jessica. “Review: Exploring Playfulness at Jack Hanley Gallery in New Show Titled ‘Spiel-trieb’” Juxtapoz, January 16, 2018.

92 culturedmag.com

ROCK SOLIDKathleen Ryan enters the New York art scene with a larger than life solo show.BY RACHEL SMALL PORTRAIT BY LOGAN JACKSON

If August tends to be a sleepy time for New York City, the artworld in particular can seemingly come to a standstill. But one wouldn’tguess as much visiting Kathleen Ryan: When I caught up with her in herEast Williamsburg studio shortly before Labor Day, she had been workingseven days per week for 10 to 12 hours at time since the beginning of themonth in preparing for her first New York solo show, opening September13 at Arsenal Contemporary.

“There’s one week before everything is getting picked up,” she says.And I’m trying to finish new sculptures for Frieze London. I’m in deep intask-list making mode.” It’s been a necessary skill as of late; back inFebruary, Ryan saw through a life-altering decision to move to New Yorkand leave her native Los Angeles. Shortly after, dealer Francois Ghebaly ofDowntown L.A.’s Ghebaly Gallery displayed her work at March’sIndependent art fair. Arsenal Contemporary co-director Isabelle Kowal hadbeen interested in her work, and was keen to see it in person. “When Icame to Independent, I immediately went to Ghebaly’s booth,” she says.It did not disappoint, and she bought a piece on the spot, and, in practicallythe same breath, asked if Ryan could have a show at the space.

In her practice, Ryan is influenced by historical styles and motifs increating the large-scale sculptures—an aesthetic predicated by herantique-dealing mother, as well as majoring in archaeology. Often renderedin heavy, industrial materials, her works are rife with shapes inspired byplants and animals, like a concrete bunch of grapes, as in Bacchante

(2015). The aim is for the substance to “weigh down the airiness of asubject,” she explains.

Ryan will present five new sculptures in the Arsenal exhibition,including a pearl necklace assembled using bronze chandelier parts andblack bowling balls; as well as a pink granite statue, carved from amanufacturing part called an angle block, which she bought on eBay. Threeadditional hanging works emulate the seed pods of the queen palm, acommon variety in L.A., with iron palm husks encapsulating clusters of jadeand rose quartz stones.

The variances between the iron, “the material of the industrialrevolution, a tool for creating order and rational systems,” and the rosequartz and jade, “more ethereal, feeling-based,” exemplifies the sort ofphysical and cultural contrasts that fill out her works’ conceptualdimensions.

The bowling ball piece, for instance, “is a big pearl necklace, but Idon’t want to trap it there. I hope it is still open enough to also perhaps bea snake, balls and chains, a sex toy or a formal sculpture and a romanticgift,” says Ryan.

“She takes from nature and transforms it totally,” observes Kowal.Loreta Lamargese, co-director alongside Kowal at Arsenal Contemporary,also finds the mutability of Ryan’s work to be “incredibly compelling.” “Hersculptures all have their stories, their own histories,” says Lamargese.“Then, in the final form, the different narratives kind of melt together intoone story.”

culturedmag.com 93

Ryan in her East Village studio, with works inprogress for her solo show at Arsenal Contemporary.

REVIEWS APR. 06, 2017

Kathleen RyanLOS ANGELES,

at Ghebaly

by Jennifer S. Li

Kathleen Ryan: Between Two Bodies, 2017, granite, glazed

ceramic, and steel, 82½ by 41½ by 47½

inches; at Ghebaly.

Kathleen Ryan’s first solo exhibition flowed like a nostalgic but

sobering love ballad, the seven sculptures speaking to the beauty

found in the fluctuations of nature, industry, and culture. The show’s

title, “Weightless Again,” played on the heft and lightness of the

artworks and was borrowed from a song of the same name by the

husband-and-wife duo Handsome Family. “This is why people OD on

pills and jump from the Golden Gate Bridge,” the lyrics go.

“Anything to feel weightless again.”

Between Two Bodies (all works 2017) features two three-ton granite

blocks that are notched and angled with the severity of brutalist

architecture. One block rests atop three glazed ceramic oranges

placed on the other block. The sculpture poetically eulogizes formerly

thriving industries that helped shape Los Angeles. The granite, which

Ryan bought on eBay, originally belonged to the defense contractor

Northrop Grumman. The aerospace industry, once booming in

Southern California, has shrunk to a fraction of what it was at its peak

in the 1990s. Commercial orange groves, which were established in

the 1840s, flourished until the 1950s in what is now downtown Los

Angeles but gave way to factories and homes.

Rise and Fall is a stucco sculpture of an unusually shaped palm tree,

which Ryan often visited while walking through her former Pasadena

neighborhood. Growing in a freeway underpass, the tree developed a

coiling trunk that seemed to mirror the forms of the freeway arteries.

Ryan made her twenty-foot work in the gallery, and it was destroyed

at the exhibition’s end. While Charles Ray, with whom the artist

studied at UCLA, removed a decomposing California redwood and

reproduced it in Japanese cypress for his sculpture Hinoki (2007),

Ryan’s palm remains where she found it.

Complementing the tree, two palm fronds (taken from another tree)

cast in iron, both titled Wisp (Carrie Furnace), sat on the floor

nearby. Ryan brought a rubber mold of the leaves from California to

the historic Carrie Furnaces in Pennsylvania to have these works

poured. Once responsible for more than 60 percent of the country’s

iron production, the furnaces are now open periodically for

educational demonstrations. Hanging in the same room, Pearls convincingly approximates a necklace in giant scale using pink

bowling balls strung together with rope. Procured from eBay and

Craigslist, the balls bear the marks of previous owners—an engraving

of “Andrea” or “Deb,” a decorative pattern of mawkish swooping

hearts—serving as reminders of how the items were once treasured.

The necklace draped over a wall into the next gallery, where the rope

was broken as if it had been ripped off a wearer’s neck.

The feral parrots that fly over Southern California—a phenomenon

that arose after parrots were released from the Busch Gardens theme

park when it was turned into a brewery in the 1970s—were the

subject of two works in the show. For these, Ryan made versions of

the parrots in mottled, glazed clay, their tails drooping down, perhaps

as a sign of their rough city life. A pair sit on a ledge in an untitled

piece, and in Parasol a group rests on a steel umbrella-like object

instead of a tree. As with the depictions of birds in Greek funerary

memorials or Dutch vanitas paintings, these parrots remind us of the

transformative power of time.

Kathleen Ryan at Ghebaly

GalleryFebruary 8, 2017

Text by Angella d'Avignon

Kathleen Ryan, Weightless Again(Installation view). Imagecourtesy of the artist and

Ghebaly Gallery.

Weightless Again, Kathleen Ryan’s solo show atGhebaly Gallery lifts its title from a Handsome FamilyVRQJǘERXWJHWWLQJǘZǘ\JHWWLQJORVWǘQGLJQGLQJǘ

momentary high in escapism. Scale, weight, and color make for a playful de ance of physics by way of heavy rigging and slick installation where surreality serves as a relief from formality.

Though Ryan’s work is scaled to the room, her sculptures feel delicate and ne-tuned. Parasol (2017) features lime green ceramic parrot-shapes perched atop the metal skeleton of a beach umbrella stripped of its fabric; the piece looks wistful and deserted, like a vacation that never ended. Suspension and scale make most of the magic in Between Two Bodies (2017), where three ceramic oranges are compressed between two blocks of granite. Each slab, with its mirrored, L-shaped protrusion, faces in an opposite direction, creating a classical sense of balance. There is no juice, only a looming sense of pressure.

In Pearls (2017), a string of hot pink bowling balls are draped over the gallery wall like a necklace tossed on a dresser after a night out. Names of former owners are inscribed on the surface of each ball,bHQFǘSVXOǘWLQJǘQǘPRURXVǘEVHQFHEHWZHHQREMHFWand owner. This reads more like romance than camp. Where levity feels unachievable, Ryan’s perception of heft and lightness feels preternatural and witchy; OHYLWǘWLRQǘQGEǘOǘQFHVRPHKRZFRPHHǘVLO\b/LNHbeing on the road or falling in love, there’s a period of frivolity before banality sets in. Here at Ghebaly, Ryan has captured that liminality by building a world where the heavy feels weightless despite the crushing reality that argues otherwise.

:HLJKWOHVV$JǘLQUXQVIURPb-ǘQXǘU\Ý)HEUXǘU\ǘW*KHEǘO\*ǘOOHU\(:ǘVKLQJWRQ%OYG/RVAngeles, CA 90021)

Kathleen Ryan, Wisp (CarrieFurnace) (2017). Cast iron, 11.5 x23.5 x 22 inches. Image courtesy

of the artist and GhebalyGallery.

Kathleen Ryan, Untitled (2017).Glazed ceramic, chrome platedsteel, 20 x 22 x 12 inches. Image

courtesy of the artist andGhebaly Gallery.

Kathleen Ryan, Pearls (2017).Bowling balls, rope, dimensionsvariable. Image courtesy of the

artist and Ghebaly Gallery.

Kathleen Ryan, Between TwoBodies (2017). Granite, glazed

ceramic, steel, 82.5 x 41.5 x 47.5inches. Image courtesy of the

artist and Ghebaly Gallery.

Sappho once wrote: ‘I declare / That later on, / Even in an age unlike our own, / Someone will remember who we are.’ Now that later on is now, let’s agree that our poet was right. We remember her, of course, and look what else we’ve taken from the Ancient Greeks: the basis of democracy, the foundations of philosophy, the writings of Homer; not to mention the fundamentals of science, the Olympics and the alarm clock, naturally.

Kathleen Ryan’s sculptures have long made use of Ancient Greek iconography as an excuse to coax forward certain more contemporary tropes. Take her ceramic Wine Fountain (2012), which perched on a

ase o inder o s and ea ed a o er t e oor e ise and a a ro o g a ed oni o ns t at dissected UCLA’s pristine New Wight Gallery in 2014; or More is More Snake Ring (2014): part coiled chthonic serpent, part end of season Topshop accessory.

The same goes for Ryan’s latest exhibition at Josh Lilley, which marks the Los Angeles-based artist’s de t so o s o n t e first roo a ea n o on rete grapes ang i e petrified a oons or fossilised buoys, shackled to one another with heavy-set chains. Some glossy, some cracked, they recall the cluster of fruit that Dionysus once nestled on his broad shoulder, but their base, a precarious structure coated with a sickly pink, evokes the modern-day seaside: those cheaply made, once-bright amusement arcades, long dulled by the salty spray of the ocean.

Aptly titled Bacchante (Pink Table) (all works 2016), its twin Bacchante (Tall White) waits downstairs, a ore si ea e n drooping ro a ead eig t ar e p int e ta e t e first iteration as protot pe t en t is is finis ed prod t s ee grandiose eroi at said t e ra stain ess stee in s peeking through the gaps in the grapes again shatter the illusion of Grecian myth, tugging the piece

a to t e ind stria i ed present e sa e goes or t e ad a ent Capri e a on rete o ster ose pearlescent treasure is a cream, factory-produced bowling ball, and the shimmering pewter laurel wreath, Untitled nod to ards t e onstr ted notion o ea t t e ora and is e d in p a e a weighted, rusting bucket; its delicate silver leaves bound together with copper wire.

Intersecting this classical imagery are Lipstick Rail and Light Rail, minimal steel stair rails that have een appropriated painted and t isted into agged inter entions e first a sing e ar o pri ar red

balances precariously in a twisted L-shape alongside Bacchante (Pink Table). Downstairs, the second as a s n ig t e o finis and is ndo ted t e ost ea ti or ere ts t in anisters r n a ross

t e oor t en t p ards in roo ed stripes e ore o ing to rest a ard ose to t e ei ing i e ea s o ig t or agged so nd a es gainst t e ite ri a s it de t disse ts t e roo ea t rising e ort ess r ta in its ateria it t gra e in its s o ta ing ro e t to rig t

a o rite spot in an s s o is do nstairs in t e entre o t e first roo rig t in ront o ig t ai you look through the sharp yellow struts you will see an old radiator, its white pipes vertically dissecting t e e o t e nderside o a stair ase its steps reating a grid e e t and a s oping ater pipe ra ing the whole composition. It’s a geometry of utility, but it’s charming, and this is exactly what Ryan’s work argues for: the crude materials that come together to produce beauty and the untapped beauty that can be found in crude places.

Kathleen RyanJOSH LILLEY 44-46 Riding House Street May 27–July 5Los Angeles–based artist Kathleen Ryan’s sculptures are big andbold—seemingly hypertrophied in the life-altering California sun.She uses functional, everyday items salvaged from thrift stores andjunkyards—curtain panels, railings—and reconfigures them withslick and subtle gestures. For example, Lipstick Rail (all works2016) is a bent, upended, fire-engine-red railing, which resemblesa giant line of the titular makeup, drawn in three dimensions.

In Bacchante (Tall White), countless concrete spheres, like anoversize cluster of grapes, tumble from atop a pristine marblecolumn, ready to burst. Their smoothly polished surfaces, mottledin varying tones of gray, from pale pebble to rich slate, glimmer.Fecund and sensuous, they summon forth the Greco-Roman deityof wine, madness, ecstasy, and fertility.

Further classical references appear in Untitled. Ivy is cast in pewter, complete with delicate capillaries, and woven toform a huge metallic wreath. And Caprice recalls Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus, ca. 1486: a pale pink clamshellopening to reveal a pearlescent bowling ball that’s replaced the serene goddess being blown to shore.

Ryan’s materials can be hard, shiny, and cold. But with the artist’s playful and charming tweaks, they go beyondMinimalist aesthetics. The ways Ryan transforms the strange beauty of junk reminds the viewer that commonobjects can become scintillatingly uncommon if you consider them thoughtfully and for long enough.

— Louisa Elderton

Kathleen Ryan, Bacchante (Tall White), 2016,concrete, marble, stainless steel, 94 x 55 x 42".

California Decadence: On the work of Kathleen Ryan

by Gladys-Katherina Hernando

Published in exhibition catalog: Temecula, Helmuth Projects, San Diego, CA June 2014

Illusion is the first of all pleasures. –Oscar Wilde

Snakes, palm fronds, scaffolding, a wine fountain, an oversize birdcage; these are some of the items found in the studio of Kathleen Ryan. She is an archaeologist and a collector when discovering the odd artifacts that eventually take the shape of her sculptures. Using clay and metal to create large-scale pieces, Ryan works in the generative space of the decorative to explore the complexities of life in a society torn between excess, overindulgence, and the artificial. But what is decadence? According to Philip Stephan in 1974, writing about the late-19th century philosophy of Paul Verlaine,“the notion of decadence involves a sustained paradox, for, unable to choose between two opposing ideas, it cordially accepts both. Decadent thinkers accepted [the] idea that nature is good and civilization is bad, yet they enthusiastically preferred the artificial: such a perverse enjoyment of what is thought to be evil characterizes decadence.” Ryan troubles the notion of contemporary decadence through a displacement of cultural consumption and cumulative histories via ambitiously scaled works that are amassed into formal installations.

Born in Southern California, Ryan is influenced by living in Los Angeles. The inspires her and facilitates her own consumption. Raised near the ocean, Ryanʼs work carries a feeling of nostalgia and epic beauty. Her color palate is reminiscent of the spectrum of sun-drenched hues found in and around the city. Every mark on the clay is the index of her hand or a part of her body, made through a physical imprint. Though her sculptures have a highly corporal nature to them, they are also strangely relaxed and comfortable in their clay skin, reflecting the attitude of “California Cool” that she grew up with. Ryan finds her objects by scouring thrift stores and boutiques for unusual forms, wherein she gives new life to discarded items. Treating her subjects with clay from the earth, she creates ambitiously scaled sculptures that contain a variety of histories and meanings. Within these artifacts Ryan unearths the objectʼs lineage toward her final form. Paired together, the work builds upon an accumulation of discourses - the decorative, kitsch, craft, the body, and feminism.

Take for example the classical column, a trope Ryan used in the large scale sculptureThe Rise and Fall (2014) where she made five large white columns as a colonnade that reached up to a concrete beam of existing architecture in a gallery. The piece was made of irregular size sections, with hand and body marks that raked from ceiling to the floor. In this work, Ryan examined the column from its original form of classical architecture, to its iconographic meaning, to its kitsch iterations. The column retains all of these histories and in her hands, the form bears the weight of its own history, ever so off-kilter. It precariously bears the heaviness of the space while giving a humanly sense of scale to both the work and to the architecture. This is how Ryan approaches her work; considering the spectrum of influences that an icon can carry with it, while exploiting its histories in the present. True to the illusion of decadence, she fills the work with associations and aesthetic until it overflows into chaos.

In their accumulation, Ryan creates a play between truth and fiction, harnessing aspects of Hollywoodʼs theatrical architecture and magical aura. Sometimes the metal structures of her objects melt under the weight of

the clay in the kiln, creating a duality between the frail and the rigid. They might almost melt away or crack apart with the slightest touch, yet they are strong, fierce forms with a presence all their own. As in the piece Block Wall(2012), a metal fence painted in a aqua color glaze, references the spaces between concrete blocks on a wall. Yet, the piece has given way to the heat of the kiln, melting enough to make waves of the once solid grid of metal. Even the unassuming leaf of the Bird of Paradise flower takes on new life in Crown of Paradise, (2013) as a representation of the paradisial illusion of luxury and paradise that is L.A. Ryanʼs oversized wreath of Bird of Paradise leaves are given a facade similar to a gray, stucco building – a quintessential texture found across Los Angeles – reducing the exoticism of the flower into a play between beauty and the banal; uplifting the bastardized forms that come out of the consumption of design. In a time where the proliferation of technology seems to paralyze human interaction and facilitates the consumption of all things, from information to images, this return to the hand, the primitiveness of clay atop extravagant domestic objects relocates human desire back into nature.

By displacing her objects back into the realm of the body and the feminine, Ryan presents us with the paradox of current life. By taking the earth in the form of clay and placing it over a human-made metal structure, the artist has found a way for the earth to compete for its territory again. As the clay and the metal battle to hold together or split apart, the concept of decadence comes to fruition. It is a return to nature in the most basic way, all the while bringing new and ornate objects into the world. As in the thinking of the symbolists which inspire her, such as Verlaine or Baudelaire, Ryanʼs work evokes a latent spirituality, creating a temporary refuge from a culture of excess. The sculpture is not merely a sculpture, but a vessel that carries circulating histories and spirituality with it. These histories work to remind us of the present and of the flaneur - that we should observe the finite details and possibly stop and notice those famous California blue skies above.

Kathleen Ryan, “Block Wall,” 2012. Glazed ceramic,steel, 72 × 140 × 24 in. Courtesy of the artist.

April 2nd, 2014

CORPOREAL IMPULSE: Contemporary ArtistsWorking in Clayby Allyson Unzicker

Tactile experience […] adheres to the surface of our body; we cannot unfold it before us, and it never quitebecomes an object. Correspondingly, as the subject of touch, I cannot flatter myself that I am everywhereand nowhere; I cannot forget in this case that it is through my body that I go to the world, and tactileexperience occurs ‘ahead’ of me, and is not centred in me.

—Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, 1945

In an age where technology tends to form more physical detachments than connections, there is acultural longing to experience something tangible and handmade. It is this reason that a mediumsuch as clay continues to appeal today. Touch is absorbed into clay, leaving a record of the artist’spresence on its surface. In recognizing these imprints as the mark of its maker, the viewer becomesconscious of his or her own hands and body. In examining ceramics through a phenomenologicallens, we are challenged to consider the role our bodies play in perceiving the world around us.

In Phenomenology of Perception, written in 1945,Maurice Merleau-Ponty helped to re-conceptualize theway in which we look at the world, not just with ourmind but with our bodies, which is to say, beyond thevisual world alone. Instead, he postulated an embodiedperception, an idea that positions our body as amedium, through which we gain consciousness of ourworld. A blow to long-held dualistic theories ofconsciousness—ones that separate the mind from thebody—Merleau-Ponty’s theories afford an active andexpansive means of understanding ourselves andviewing art. Through his corporeal lens, we begin to

Bari Ziperstein, “Bust,” 2013. Terracotta, custom decals,concrete, leather, 36 × 24 × 36 . Courtesy of the artist.

Julia Haft-Candell, “Toupee,” 2013. Terracotta, wood,linen. Approx. 18 × 20 × 6 . Courtesy of the artist.

understand how our entire body, not just our sight, is fundamental to experiencing artwork.

By applying Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological assessments to clay, we can begin to comprehendthe role that the body plays in viewing and creating art as an experiential practice. Through ourbodily awareness, we can appreciate the affective quality of clay, the impulse to touch with our eyesand to see with our hands. It is through this aesthetic empathy that we are able to perceive thesensation of touch to our own bodies. Corporeal Impulse, at the Vincent Price Art Museum at EastLos Angeles College, references this relation in clay through hand-built sculptures. The worksdiscussed in this essay can be seen as remnants of bodily sensations, as the residue of clay on one’sfingers.

Influenced by biological systems, Julia Haft-Candell’s sinuous sculptures are a reflection of whatshapes the organic body inside and out. Created by layering multiple materials including clay, fabric,paper, and wood, tight patterns are often meticulously etched onto their surfaces, while string isoften used to bind the winding repetition evoked in her linear clay forms. Their structure is a playbetween plant and human life, in which undulating shapes become intestinal in appearance. As seenin her work “Toupee” (2013), the resemblance to an infinity symbol is a cue to internal bodilyfunctions. The smeared texture of its surface is scatological; its fecal membrane creates an endlessintestinal system. “Toupee”operates as an infinite spiral reflecting ingestion and digestion; theconstant flow of matter into and out of the body. The unending curvilinear object creates a constantrhythm, interrupted by a piece of linen placed atop its “head” that anthropomorphizes thesculpture’s abstraction. Haft-Candell’s three-dimensional collages reveal both the simplicity andcomplexity of the systems in and around us. Through their repetition, rough yet smooth textures,and intuitive yet careful formations, Haft-Candell’s forms postulate an awareness of how the organicbody is both a medium and an inspiration to the production of her work.

Usinghis ownbody to

measure the connection between body and material, Matt Merkel Hess’s installation consists of ashelving unit that displays a series of hand-built ceramic sculptures. The shelving unit reflects the

exact measurement of Merkel Hess’s height and wingspan, with the height of each individual shelf corresponding to his body parts including his feet, legs, hand, arms, and mouth. The shelves function as a temporary archive, recording Merkel Hess’s bodily presence through clay. The works presented in this installation are a wry experimentation with simplistic modes of artistic production. For instance, “Knee Bowl,” “Shin Bowl,” and “Palm Bowl” (all 2011),are all made by simply pressing clay onto his body to create an indentation. “Right Hand Sculpted By My Left Hand” is a sculpted version of Merkel Hess’s right hand using only his left hand. The object’s awkward construction is the result of the artist’s attempt to sculpt solely with his non-dominant hand. In their archival display, the sculptures become memory objects of his artistic practice.

The top shelf displays “Every Spoon In My House” (2013), an homage to a piece in Mike Kelley’s1993 exhibition, Mike Kelley: The Uncanny,in which Kelley collected and displayed almost everyspoon he owned. Kelley stated that, “the uncontrollable impulse to collect and order is itself,

uncanny.”1 By re-creating every spoon in his own house in clay, Merkel Hess’s piece functions as astand-in for the original. These spoons, holding no sentimental value, represent the accumulation ofarbitrary household objects over time. Yet, their handmade quality serves to index a moment in hispersonal life and artistic practice. Through the mundane act of collecting everyday objects, theartist’s identity inadvertently becomes attached to them.

Jeffry Mitchell’s vessels embody artistic and queer identity through narrative displays involvingsmall animals, skulls, flowers, chains, and other whimsical objects and creatures. These figures oftenappear cartoonish and clumsy due to the immediacy involved in their construction. Althoughseemingly light-hearted in appearance, they are deceptively irreverent. Covered in a thick, creamyglaze, the figures become almost buried in obscurity. Innocent creatures are cast alongside malegenitalia and orifices making the muddy and crude application of the glaze read as excrement andother bodily discharges, such as semen and spit. Embracing the craft domesticity of ceramics,Mitchell employs clay as a medium to engage with critical content, such as the struggles of religion,sexual identity, and loss.

Mitchell’s piece, “1976,” depicts husky men holding hands, along with bears, skulls, and large

grasping hands, all of which spiral around the shape of the stacked vessels. The playful bears2

symbolize pre-AIDS era promiscuity. The hands reach out and grasp for freedom only to be buriedin a pile of skulls which are a reoccurring symbol in Mitchell’s work and serve as a reminder ofhuman mortality. This continual interplay between fertility and impotence, life and death, reflectsthe pleasures of a fearless time in history before the devastation of the AIDS crisis. Ripe with tensionand visual splendor, Mitchell’s work provokes a longing for touch. Their raw physicality is madeevident by their totemic presence. They become minor monuments representing the tenderstruggles of repression, desire, and longing, allowing the viewer to feel their emotive content that isboth joyous and contemplative.

Matt Merkel Hess, “Right Hand Sculpted By My LeftHand,” 2013. Unglazed porcelain, 4 1/4 × 8 × 2 1/2 .Courtesy of the artist.

“Decorative Protection”(2011 – 2013), is a series of workthat dismantles misconceptions about the female bodyand its need to be protected. Here Bari Zipersteinexpands her ceramic practice outside of clay byincorporating cement, leather, custom decals, and otherfound materials into her sculptures. “Bust”combinesterracotta in the upper body and cement in the lower.The face is made with a decal of an abstracted screendoor with leering eyes, while the lower half is devoid oflimbs, consisting only of cinder blocks adorned with aleather shawl. This imagery is derived from 1980sadvertisements depicting women standing near wroughtiron security doors, protective devices meant to appealto a demographic of stay-at-home wives.

Ziperstein’s sculptures deconstruct the female form by abstracting the body and re-presenting it as apowerful structure. These Frankenstein amalgamations of the female figure effectively contrast thevisual seduction of marketing and the misconceptions of women as weak and frail as portrayed inthese ads. In using such durable materials, Ziperstein creates a super-evolved female form, whosestrong exterior becomes a screen-like partition for her own protection, rather than the subject ofvulnerability. The stacked cinder blocks act as a dividing wall between viewer and object; its turnedhead and watchful eyes peer out as if warding off danger. Though these figures are a fragmented andabstracted form of the female body, their totemic fortitude conveys their strength.

Kathleen Ryan’s sculptures are as much about physical strength as they are about fragility.Intuitively visceral and deliberately raw, her sculptures are created by pinching and molding clayover steel armatures. Finger prints remain visible on their surfaces retaining a visual record of theirhistory and maker. During the firing process, the steel begins to melt and the cracking of the clayoccurs as a resistance to the steel. “Block Wall” (2012)is a drooping outline of a cinder block wall: itsthin lines create the appearance of a three-dimensional drawing in space. Drawing, like clay, sharesa similar sense of immediacy. Standing as a melted, deteriorating screen, the upright position of“Block Wall” is made possible only with the support of each panel leaning against one another. Thisunconventional construction distinguishes it from the sterile industrial architecture that inspiredthe artist.

“Block Wall”’s crumbling exterior exists in a form of constant decay and repair. It is innatelycontradictory in that it is durable and fragile, large yet unable to stand on its own; it is both steel andclay. Its large scale garners a firm, physical presence that requires the viewer to walk around it; yet itagain counters its own sculptural qualities by being deceptively flat. In this way, the piece functionsmuch like a drawing, challenging the spectator’s perception of depth through its illusory screen. The

Jeffry Mitchell, “Basket With Two Skeletons,” 2013.Glazed earthenware, 10 1/2 × 10 × 9 1/2 . Courtesy ofthe artist.

negative space, in and around its outlines, causes theviewer to fill in the missing information with their ownimagination. It is through absence that the formsbecome present.

Notes

1. Note from Harems (2004)

2. Also a slang term used by queer men to identify husky men with body hair

CONTRIBUTOR

Allyson UnzickerALLYSON UNZICKER is an M.F.A. candidate in Critical & Curatorial Studies, University of California, Irvine, Claire Trevor School of theArts. This essay was written for the exhibition, Corporeal Impulse, at the Vincent Price Art Museum at East Los Angeles College(January 21 - April 12, 2014).