NEW YORK.- Barry Friedman Ltd., welcomes five new ceramic artists—previously represented by Garth Clark and Mark Del Vecchio before their storied gallery went private last August—with a group exhibition, on view from March 20 through April 26, 2008. The artists—David Regan, Alev Eb�zziya Siesbye, Beth Cavener Stichter, Akio Takamori, and Kukuli Velarde—bring a diversity of approaches, subject matter, and techniques to the gallery. A sampling of characteristic works will represent each artist. This exhibition will run concurrently with Transformation, an exhibition of new and historic work by Kondo Takahiro. Both exhibitions will open with a reception on March 20 from 5:00-8:00 pm at Barry Friedman, Ltd.’s new Chelsea location: 515 West 26th Street, New York.

David Regan works in porcelain, covering the form in black slip and then painstakingly creating complex scenes by drawing through this surface in a technique known as sgraffito. The lavishness of the surface ornament is matched by whimsical vessel forms: tooth shaped teapots, soup tureens in the shape of deer or snakes that have swallowed cars and women, and modern day arks carrying pop-up book animals away from the hazards of the war. His fantastical scenarios mix mythology, religion, and socio-political discourse with dark humor.

Turkish-born, Paris-based Alev Eb�zziya Siesbye spent much of her adult life in Copenhagen, first working at the Royal Copenhagen Porcelain Manufactory, then opening her own studio. Her vessels represent a unique synthesis of Danish understatement and Anatolian historicism. Made of stoneware, her work is coil-built, but has the appearance of being "thrown" and each piece is poised on a signature small foot. Siesbye makes the deceptively simple form of the bowl her own through subtle distinctions: a slight narrowing at the neck, a knife-edge sharp rim. These are classical forms made new.

Beth Cavener Stichter creates sculpture based on human psychology, stripped of context and rationalization, and articulated through animal forms. “On the surface,” says Stichter, “these figures are simply feral animals suspended in a moment of tension. Beneath the surface, they embody the consequences of human fear, apathy, aggression, and misunderstanding.” The widespread appeal of animals provides her with a guise behind which she is free to directly confront universal human concerns—violence, sexuality, gender, and desire—without sentimentality or pretense. Through painstaking modeling, the animal subjects are transformed into human psychological portraits designed to communicate the paradoxes of the human condition.

Early in his career, Akio Takamori worked innovatively with the vessel form and its structure, creating flat, envelope-shaped pots. In the mid-1990s, however, Takamori began creating large ceramic figures, fashioned after people from his childhood village in Japan. Recently, he has begun to mix time periods and geographical locations, allowing subjects from paintings by old masters such as Goya, Velasquez or Manet to interact with the characters from his past. The figures are grouped to suggest Takamori’s belief in a collective cultural memory and represent the shifting historical, cultural, and racial perspectives that create individual and group identity.

A Peruvian artist with American citizenship, Kukuli Velarde’s work is shaped by what she terms a “continuous hybridization—a cultural context defined, redefined, and tormented by the simultaneous influences of pre-Columbian, post-Colonial, and Republican eras.” Choosing to work with clay, historically a humble material rooted in folk traditions, her sculptural aesthetic draws from pre-Columbian terracotta vessels and figurines. However, Velarde recasts traditional iconography to address a diversity of contemporary subjects, from post-colonial identity and gender relations to personal introspection. The artist also creates striking paintings on metal panels.

Barry Friedman is recognized as a visionary dealer with a collector’s eye. Since its founding in 1973, his gallery, Barry Friedman Ltd. has shown avant-garde painting, studio glass, works on paper, sculpture from 1900-1940, vintage photography, and European decorative arts. In September 2007, the gallery relocated to a new, three-level, 18,000 square-foot space in Chelsea, after spending 40 years on the Upper East Side.