Ceramics Come Full-circle

April 10, 2018

Clay, by no means, could be considered a "new" medium. But we can't deny these are times of change, and the contagion of activism will always appear across a multitude of artistic mediums.

And amidst our cultural climate, the chaos seems to have wrought a wonderful new wave of creatives working with ceramics. From politics to pop-culture, the practice has built up a presence which seems to have primarily been a product of social media.

Underground artists, who may not have had the resources to show their work in a traditional context, have crafted a community of creatives working with clay and constructed an avenue and an audience dedicated to redefining the medium in a modern manner, reassigning the artform with a relevant identity. Drawing from references that are pertinent to their own perspectives, we've seen ceramics become as much of a means for change as many other mediums that have classically carried cultural messages.

Interview by Anna Zanes
Photos by Jesper Lund

This year, women in particular have been boldly bringing back the archaic artform, forcefully redefining this functional craft as a catalyst for feminist action and forward-thinking creativity. This is the crew creating another era for clay, expanding what it can do or be. We sat down with one of the driving forces, Diana Rojas— perhaps a familiar face, if you follow her account full of artful faux footwear. Her cute, hand-built ceramic shoes have become iconic on Instagram. Crafting typically ironic-themed trends from high fashion footwear with her heart-felt clay techniques, her work has gone from her hobby after doing her day job at Group Partner, to everyone's desired piece of powerful decor, having been plucked from Instagram by Petra Collins and placed in a show at Brooklyn Museum. Honestly, Rojas is really the best— just check out the Balenciaga Croc she made for our issue 8 cover, and you'll agree. And she's not just hype— the process is truly a thoughtful one for Diana, which we discussed with her at the Group Partner studio. She shared with us her perspective on the process of ceramics, hype fashion, and the future of clay.

Diana will be a part of the group exhibiton, Clay Today, at The Hole on Bowery which is on view through May 6th.

You were just telling me about how you went to school for illustration, so how did you end up doing ceramics?

At the time, I figured I should continue my studies in the Communications program, because that would help me find a job after, as opposed to doing the fine arts thing. But while I was in school— I also realized I was more passionate about ceramics.

Did you know how to do ceramics before?

Not before college, no. I went to a studio my first year. I was initially really drawn to it because It was something totally different than the program I was in, it was something where I get to work with my hands and got to actually make something.

It’s very therapeutic. How did you end up working here, and how did that take you to where you are with your own practice?

I started working for New Partner around two years ago, and recently they’ve really blown up, it’s kind of crazy. We have so many wholesale accounts. I started here just doing painting and some of the production, but now I do a lot of the customer service.

I feel like I see their pieces everywhere. Are you working with a slab roller over there?

No— those are downstairs. This is what we call a split, it’s like watered-down clay, what sand does for example is to pour this into the molds, the plastic sucks the water out of the clay, and what you’re left with is this kind of shell, then you clean them up, spray them, let them dry and then paint them, and put them in the kiln.

It’s ironic— and pretty incredible— to Group Partner has this hyper-systemized setup, and such an uncensored end-product. So, when did you start doing your own stuff?

At first I didn’t really feel comfortable using this space, but then after talking to the boss and everything, and then we decided I could start working on my own stuff. It was a year or two ago that I was like, ‘Oh, I need to get started on my own thing.’

What started it?

I had these shoes that I wore to the studio a lot, they were like the Nike Air Forces, and I just remember one summer a year after working here I remember thinking, my shoes are trashed, like just really dirty, and they had clay everywhere. I took a photo of them next to a new pair and I was like, “Wow, that looks like clay,” so then I decided to make some out of clay and see what that would look like, so it kind of just started from there. It’s funny to me too because ceramics are something that people show on, like, tables or have a display of some kind. It was funny to use a shoe, something from the ground, to decorate their home as art.

Yeah it’s interesting that they’re so worn, because we think of a porcelain cast as making a kind of false idol. They’re worn which is ironic, but not in a disrespectful way, it doesn’t feel like it’s making fun of it too much, it just is.

Yeah you can see there’s like a hand-built quality to them, which I like a lot.

I think a lot of people are making mainstream references in ceramics now, especially on Instagram, and I feel like some people take it really far with their commentary by making it really sloppy and then some just make it a statue. This is kind of like a middle-ground and I love it. I saw the tiny Uggs on Instagram— those are insane.

The little ones? Yeah I started making those little figures with shoes on them.

They remind me of finger skateboards from the 90’s.

I considered getting some of those for props.

You should!

I actually found your work through Petra Collins on Instagram, before we asked you to do something for office. How did that collaboration happen?

She was friends with Isaac, she’d been to the studio a few times and I talked to her, and then she sort of found my work on Instagram also and reached out to me about doing that project, Pop Rally, it sort of took off from there, she asked me to do collaborations with her friends.

I love your piece got to be our cover, I was hardcore gunning for it. And it’s the Balenciaga Croc. The best.

I was very pleasantly surprised by that.

And that’s a piece of fashion from the last decade that gets mocked a lot, but I didn’t feel like you were mocking it, yours is actually kind of cute.

It’s funny because that’s the only one that I can actually slip my foot inside. Working here I realized there are two ways to approach something: there’s the way of production, like mass-producing something, making a company out of it — and I’m learning I don’t necessarily want to do that. I’d rather take a step back and hand-build all of my pieces.

Traditionally with ceramics there’s a divergence between utilitarian and art, how would you feel you’re approaching that? Would you categorize your work as ceramic art, home decor, a fashion statement...?

It’s funny because most of the shoes I build I see the hype around them, like on Instagram or when they come out on the runway, these kind of ugly shoes, but people are talking about them, so I feel like it’s like capturing a footprint of our current time. It’s interesting to me because ceramics are an ancient art, so it’s cool to use it to capture things now, whether it be shoes or just something that’s popular currently.

Do you have any of the specific style of shoes you’ve made?

I have the checkered Vans, but they’re trashed too.

Next up is that Croc.

Art

Allen-Golder Dreams of Smoke

March 22, 2024

In their debut solo exhibition in New York, interdisciplinary artist Allen-Golder Carpenter challenges America’s mass consumption of Black culture. Taking its title from a Cities Aviv track of the same name, To Dream of Smoke deals in the aesthetics and objects found within Hip Hop, pop culture and the prison industrial complex.

In their expansive exploration of Black experiences, the Washington D.C. based artist creates sculptural works sourced from the mundane: electric scales, ski masks, Instagram posts, inmate property bags, Domino sugar, screenshots of The Boondocks. The ambitious project includes a sound installation made in collaboration with multi-talented Playboi Carti affiliate Blackhaine and the To Dream of Smoke / 100 Rappers book, a visual study of contemporary rap.

The exhibition is on display at No Gallery in the Lower East Side until April 7th, 2024.

Words by Jard Lerebours
Images courtesy of No Gallery / Allen-Golder Carpenter

With To Dream of Smoke, Allen merges his art practice and love of rap music. He explains the influence of rap on his work, “I love rap music because it's so thick with lingo and many times very regionally specific terminology and accents that I wonder how much someone outside of this music culturally understands when listening?” This question of understanding and viewership is at the center of Allen’s exhibition, the latest entry in Allen’s “Body Surrogate” series which presents and reimagines representational depictions of Black masculinity. His pieces have been exhibited in spaces around the world including Screw Gallery, Galerie Kandlhofer, Von Ammon Co. and Icebox Project Space.

The Race 1, 2023-2024

Allen uses late 2010’s viral rapper Tay K as an entry point to force viewers to confront our complicity in systems that force Black boys into survival tactics. In The Race, he juxtaposes Tay K’s first photo posted from jail with the platinum certification for his song "The Race" aligning them with a shattered hand mirror. The piece shows the disconnect between the commercial success of Tay K’s brief rap career and the broken systems currently shaping his life. He asks us to reconsider the media portrayals of Tay K, “How much can we judge the actions of a child fighting for survival, what if instead of just punishing him, we punished the society that failed him?”

The Race 2, 2024

In The Race 2, Allen takes inspiration from Gil Scott Heron’s “Pieces of a Man" and recreates the photo of Tay K through an assemblage of inmate property inventory bags. In addition, the bags contain a shredded shirt and shattered glass. Using this construction, he visualizes the dehumanization and humiliation that occurs within the United States’ prison system.

Untitled (self portrait), 2024

In Untitled (self portrait), Allen pairs a portrait of Maryland rapper Q Da Fool with a ski mask stretched over a bag of powdered sugar. He tells me about the encounter that inspired the piece, "I used to wear ski masks to try and look tough or unapproachable. One time, someone came right up to me and felt at ease talking to me because of my soft, even sweet eyes”. Through this interrogation of Black masculinity and its performance, Allen questions the desire to appear intimidating in the first place.

I Choose Violence, 2024

In I Choose Violence, Allen draws attention to the mental health crises within the Black community particularly impacting Black men. The piece which consists of photographs and scales is named after the song “I Choose Violence” by Atlanta rapper Glokk40spaz, Allen was inspired by a line in the song where Glokk40spaz alludes to self harm. Allen was taken aback by this break in armor and related through his own struggles around body dysmorphia and an eating disorder. These experiences are aligned in the piece through the grouping of a bathroom scale and digital scale for weighing drugs.

Catch To Dream of Smoke at No Gallery before it goes.

Art

Gerald Lovell Finds Beauty in the Mundane

March 19, 2024

Gerald Lovell isn't trying to make a statement. He rejects the idea that portrayals of Blackness are inherently political. He's simply documenting what happens around him. His latest exhibition, Verde, now showing at PPOW Gallery, captures otherwise fleeting moments of his closest friends and loved ones. However, the self-taught artist is meticulous in their recreations, combining impressionist painting with an impasto technique — both techniques rely on the attention and accumulation of the miniscule.

Lovell takes these seemingly unimportant moments and does what every great artist does best: notices. He pays attention to details that create their own narratives. Whether it's the simplicity of a dinner or the moment of contact in a warm embrace, Lovell immortalizes the ephemera in his canvases. And with Verde, Lovell embarks on a journey of self-discovery through monumental portraits that invited viewers into the depths of his mind.

Text by Sara Eldewak
Images courtesy of PPOW Gallery and Gerald Lovell

Self Portrait (31), 2024

oil on panel 60 x 48 ins.

(LOVELL-086)

Portals (Cala Deià), 2024
oil on panel 60 x 48 ins.
(LOVELL-088)

Born in 1992 in Chicago, IL to Puerto Rican and African American parents — Gerald Lovell began painting professionally at 22, and has been beautifully capturing candid moments ever since. When asked about one of his most intimate pieces, a group portrait featured in the exhibition named Untitled, Lovell calls it “an act of biography." "These are all scenarios in which we're living.” The moments that he captures are universal, and there's a palpable sense of tenderness in the communal aspect of his candids.

Discussing his perspective as an artist, he emphasized the importance of embracing his subjects, "I'm meditating on things we may take for granted. Traveling, eating, friends, I cherish it all." It's clear when speaking to him that painting gives him a sense of purpose, and that his work is deeply personal, “Everyone I paint is a friend of mine.” From a friend to the hit Hulu series The Bear, his list of references is encyclopedic and expansive. He praises The Bear's capability to beautify simple moments in the kitchen like cutting vegetables, or even decorating a plate reminds him of painting. “Restaurants are feeding you an experience, and I'd like to do the same in my work."

Ant on His Patio, 2024

oil on panel 72 x 60 ins.

(LOVELL-083)

Lovell finds the majesty in moments that are like any other. From intimate portraits of friends grilling, as seen in Ant on his Patio, to images of strangers committed to memory, it's evident that Lovell uses painting as a form of therapy and sacred outlet that allows him to access memories hidden in his mind. It was evident while speaking with him that his work is handled with care, and an extrospective view of the people and world around him.

Untitled (Christian's Birthday), 2023

oil on panel 72 x 60 ins.

(LOVELL-080)

To just capture everyday life and value it because it was lived, in the most honest way possible.

Waiting I, 2023

oil on panel 24 x 24 ins.

(LOVELL-079)

Daria, 2024 oil on panel

72 x 60 ins.

(LOVELL-084)

Art

Oda Jaune on Transformation, Divine Femininity and Magic in 'Miss Understand'

At the core of “Miss Understand” is a celebration of the divine feminine, or the spark that birthed humanity into existence, as well as a profound respect and admiration for the resilience of women to embrace the multidimensionality of their identities from within a society that has historically limited their agency to do so. She achieves this by masterfully invoking a visual language of repeating symbols: eyes, lit candles, fleshy body parts, serpents, and Barbies, etc. that seemingly invites the viewer to try and connect the dots while at the same time resisting the very idea that there is a rational or logical way to view or experience life or the exhibition. "Miss Understand" was on view at Templon Gallery in NYC through March 9th, 2024.

Emann Odufu: It took me a while to process the exhibition. I was initially overwhelmed by that level of detail. I was at the exhibition in the installation space with some friends, and we heard a humming noise coming from a box. It took us a second to realize that the box was a refrigerator. We opened it up, and there were apples in the fridge.

It wasn't until I started to look at Miss Understand as a character that I began to see her not as a representation of you solely as an artist but as a holistic representation of femininity in the modern world that I began to wrap my head around the exhibition. Miss Understand felt like a play on Miss Universe and every woman. My first question is for you, the artist, who is Miss Understand?

Oda Jaune: I’m so happy that you opened the door of the refrigerator. When I was working on the installation, I loved to imagine the viewer to experience the exhibition with their eyes and hands and to lie down on the bed, sit on the chairs, discover the overpainted books, and spend time in the space so they become part of the installation themselves.

“Miss Understand” is not a particular woman. It is not me. It is no woman and at the same time maybe every woman. It’s also for everybody who feels like a woman. I came up with the title on a walk with my daughter. We were looking at people's T-shirts because there was often a slogan written on them. She asked me if I had to design a t-shirt with only text, what would it be. The first thing that came to my mind was “Miss Understand” and I said that I would divide the word into two.

It's something in the nature of the woman that it is impossible to be understood. Extending it further, I think it’s in the nature of a human to not to be understood. How absurd is it to me that we are living in a time of so many numbers, facts, algorithms and scientific proofs that bring us further away from (our) nature. We're forgetting about magic and things that are not so easy to understand. When you have the feeling and understand something, you put it in a box, label it and maybe you get a key and close the file forever and say “Oh, this is this way” and you are limiting yourself. I feel almost allergic to the idea of labeling the world, people, history, everything that we try to put in a box.

Within the work there may be questions for the viewer, for their answers to arise but they don't need to position themselves and don't need to judge. Our world is so polarized. You must choose left or right, for or against, which constantly puts us in separation and division. How about making it more open for us to make mistakes and for misunderstandings and more freedom?

EO: I think that that makes a lot of sense. I saw that throughout the show, there's this idea of subverting duality or this idea that in the process of misunderstanding, there's this sort of mystery that is confronted and acknowledged. As the viewer, you see the exhibition and try to make sense of it all, but try as you may, you won't see it from the vantage point of you, the artist, and It's almost futile to try to understand.

I want to talk about the performance art piece happening on the show's last day, which I'm excited to see, and where you will animate Miss Understand in a personified form. As an artist, I love that you dig into the multidisciplinary aspect of your practice and constantly push the limitations of how you engage with your audience. I read that in the last show at Templon in Paris, you had a hologram of the Tree of Life, and now you're activating this current exhibition through performance art. Can you talk about how you're constantly reinventing your practice and your approach to toggling between these various mediums as you engage your audience?

OJ: I love that you found information and the little journey that I had with the hologram. I loved it because it was the pandemic, and the real situation where we could reset individually and as a society. I was asking existential questions, and I thought about how we're living in a world that is, for me, even though it's so dominated by inventions of our time, it is still quite magical. It's almost like another reality within our reality. I was working on this show during covid lockdown thinking about how there’s something invisible you couldn't see, you know it's in the air. I found it fascinating that we were in such a frenzy over something invisible and how it could, for a moment, change everything in our world. This thought process around visible and invisible, tangible and translucent, leads to an interest in holograms. The more I researched, I understood that I would have to create my own technique for creating a hologram, because the best things happen when you have a limited budget.

I said “OK, let's think about what we can do if we improvise.” So we created something, and it actually worked. It was like magic because we didn't have much, and it was such an improvisation and the people who loved it from all age groups were touched by it. For me, it's about how real I can make an idea and what techniques permit me to execute those visions.

I was trained as a painter and when I was younger, I really loved observing the human body. I thought it's just so incredible. Humans in general. I really love nature and observing the light and the shadow and how everything changes constantly. I honestly don't remember a moment in my life when I have been bored. What a stunning experience it is having eyes. Painting oil on canvas is the closest I can come to what I have as a vision. At some point, I reached a stage where I can paint everything that I imagine, so I created sculpture to see how I would feel when my ideas become three dimensional. When I was a young girl, I loved working with clay, the softness of it. I was also intrigued by wood and stone, marble but then I was told that, because I was a woman, I would only be able to work on small things because physically I would never be able to do what men can. I accepted that and focused on painting. Because I wanted to be as free as possible as an artist and I do love painting in an unconventional way, but I didn’t stop loving sculptures, so later I reapproached sculpture again.

One day, my daughter asked me if I wasn’t a painter what I would do in my next life. I realized that I would love to do movies, but I want to do movies that I only need to do myself. That's why there are six short videos in the exhibition and I loved making them.

EO: I'm also a filmmaker, and when I was in the installation, I thought that as I looked at the videos, whether you are shooting the videos with a crew or you're shooting them yourself.

Alone. I really love making films, combining pictures and sounds. The whole thing is moving. With painting, you have just one shot. A study found that visitors look for less than two seconds, turn and read the explanatory text for an additional 10 seconds and then move on. So, you have to decide which moment to paint and that takes months and months in order to make a difference in a span of seconds.

EO: And now you're venturing into performance art.

OJ: I am very excited though about the performance art piece because Claudia is a very special human being that I love as a dear friend. One day, she showed me something with her hands and the way she moved her finger in a way to symbolize humans, it was like a symphony, and I imagined it as a whole movie. I asked her if she wanted to collaborate for the exhibition. I love to imagine what she is going to do and love not knowing what is going to happen on that day. It’s the same with all of my paintings. When I start painting, I never know what's going to happen. What I dream of is creating a feeling of “Miss Understand “ being a real human - only the feeling that was at the core of our collaboration for the performance you are going to see on the final last day of the show. The aim was to put this feeling in a real human that will grow and materialize itself in a living, moving, breathing, heart beating woman inside the gallery space for 8 hours existing as real as every one of us. Claudia will be performing and the viewer can enter the space and decide how close and involved they want to be. Claudia Hilda is for me one of the most incredible artists with that one of a kind ability to become a pure feeling by giving up on all she is, on all knowledge and abilities, techniques and styles she has, the language, the speech to become Miss Understand.

EO: There is a quality of artistic rebellion in your work that I enjoy. Both aesthetically and with the symbols you use very well. The viewer's experience of your work has been described as deciphering a crossword puzzle, a complex web of various cues that appear from out of your subconscious and that force the viewer to confront their relation to the world and their internal belief systems. Miss Understand does not exist in a vacuum and builds on a visual language you have built throughout your career. It's a language only you speak, but the viewer can feel it. As an artist, how did you come to know yourself in such a way that you can render your subconscious into a visual language that people can feel?

OJ: I don't know but I'm going to search for an answer to give you. The thing I can tell you is that I can't work if there is somebody else around me. If there is someone else in the studio, I never reach the concentration that I need to forget the outside world. I start with something that moves me. There are certain things where there is a longing. Something I am deeply moved by, something I can’t find peace with unless I can transform it and bring it to the other side.

It doesn’t even need to be politics; it can be something like how we come into this world without choosing where and when you are dropped here and then you deal with it and then on top of that you're going to be taken away at a certain moment. Maybe this is what I really don't like as a feeling, probably like all of us I don’t like the feeling of fear or the feeling of not being able to change things or that I don’t have any power to make a change. In a way, I search for a way to deal with the reality of what is really happening in the world with eyes wide open. I reject closing them. These things move me and touch me, and I want to fight. I did start as a child with the dream to change the world. I suppose painting was my tool.

When I was 12, I moved to Germany. I could not speak the language and the kids were kind of cruel and thought I was stupid. I really couldn't express myself, I just had the basics. So, I started drawing to communicate and it worked. They were able to understand me. In this moment, I saw how many things you can say with an image. If you think of all the emojis that we send and how one heart emoji has thousands of words inside of it and there is something so open about it.

When I was a child I loved going to the library, and I would search for books with images, and I spent hours and hours and I would “read" through observing images. So, I think it's the way I get the most information. I believe my ideas come from tapping into my subconscious. It’s through the subconscious that everything comes. Your subconscious is working for you during the day and night when you're not conscious. It's a huge sea of everything and it has its own intelligence. For many centuries people believed a lot more in this other part of our intelligence and it’s a lot less respected these days. Today we are more confident about the visible things, the rational, the facts that can be scientifically proven. However, there is some truth on the other side and when I reach the point of being in tune with it, it is usually in the morning. I just love silence when I'm alone. I always start quite disciplined and controlled, but there comes the moment where all this control is lost and I’m working and not hungry and I don't know how fast time goes by, this is the most precious time and that is where the important decisions take place.

Someone told me you are born many times in your life, and you also die many times in your life and I love that, but I wanted to talk about the very first time.

EO: Birth and creation ( to ourselves, to the other, to the world) is a strong theme in your practice In this exhibition we see the connection to Birth through your depictions of the womb and pink fleshy matter, most prominently in your work entitled "M is for Mother". It's also seen in your depiction or cap nod to the biblical creation story and how that has shaped the perception of women in modern culture. Can you reflect on this theme of Birth and Creation and how it's a thread carried throughout your practice and even into your artistic philosophy?

OJ: Someone told me you are born many times in your life, and you also die many times in your life and I love that, but I wanted to talk about the very first time. The biggest painting in the show M for Mother, is about coming to earth, dedicated to the one that gave us life, the biggest present, to the mother. We often think we have freedom of choice in life, but the biggest choice has been done for us, it is not done by ourselves. What happens? Where do we come from? It all begins with pain, the first breath you take on earth is painful and your mother will be in such pain. They say that when you're born several times in your life very often it happens after a very difficult situation and you're able to start a new life. One of the most dramatic things that can happen in life is having a chance to be reborn, reinvent yourself, to reset and start new. Many of the paintings capture moments of change or transformation. You have someone of something becoming something else.

EO: One great example is "B, like Barbie."

OJ: Yes, B like Barbie is also about that. I had many barbies when I was a child and when I started painting this painting, I had no idea there would be a movie about it and it had nothing to do with that. When I was in New York, I went to see it, but I found that I just really wanted to fall asleep. I didn't watch it until the end, but what I did see was this constantly beautiful young plastic doll. But you are never the same. Depending on how you feel, how much sun you have taken in, how healthy you are, what you ate, how you slept, how much water you drink, you are never the same. Even after you go to sleep, your mind and feelings are still active because you had certain dreams that you might forget on the next day, but you change. Regardless if you forget your dreams, you are still altered by them. You are not the same. So this idea of one-dimensionality is problematic. Birth is something to be so grateful for and it is important to never forget that. At a certain point, there is so much thinking of who I am and not of how I have been born.