NEW YORK, NY.- Paddle8 today announced its sale, Contemporary Ceramics, featuring 60 works in a first-ever sale dedicated to fine art ceramics, with live bidding worldwide June 19-29. An ancient craft, ceramic production is one of the earliest forms of human expression. Today, clay-based works are an increasingly popular medium explored by contemporary artists. Ceramic works have enjoyed a growing prominence in both gallery and museum programming with new acquisitions bolstering permanent collections. Carefully curated to focus on intersections between design and fine art, Paddle8’s Contemporary Ceramics explores the work of artists who embrace both the challenges and vulnerabilities of clay.
“We’ve recently seen a shift in how ceramics are being appreciated in the contemporary art market,” says Megan Mulrooney, Senior Specialist of Contemporary Art at Paddle8. “Growing recognition amongst collectors of works that extend beyond the canvas and into three-dimensional design, has led to a real renaissance in market demand for ceramics. We’re thrilled to be showcasing some of the best works in this of-the-moment category to our global base of collectors.”
Contemporary Ceramics explores several prominent themes in the 21st century practice of clay-based artwork: the technical malleability and plasticity of clay as a medium, the prioritization of form over function, the prominence of a minimal, organic aesthetic, as well as the re-interpretation of traditional visual vocabularies that have dominated the medium’s history.
Highlights include works such as Andrew Casto’s Assemblage 110, a three-dimensional sculpture that exploits the delicacy of clay, while incorporating mixed media to create a profound sensation of fragility and movement. Chris Antemann’s works Ambrosia and A Strong Passion were created in collaboration with the revered Meissen porcelain manufactory in Germany. Her figurative porcelain sculptures recall eighteenth-century table garniture, but subvert archetypal forms by inserting sexually explicit scenarios that enhance the sense of decadence associated with the baroque forms.
Contemporary Ceramics also features minimalist works, including a vessel by California-based artist Shio Kusaka who explores both ancient and recent forms of Eastern and Western craft traditions. Two works from Daniel Buren’s series Les Cent Vases also highlight the sale. Exemplifying the artist’s rule-based, conceptual approach, the series is comprised of ten vase designs in ten colors, each bearing Buren’s trademark stripes. Collectively, the project presents a systematic refusal of multiples wherein each example is resolutely unique.
The earth-based medium of clay is brought to its highest organic expression by the Haas Brothers’ whose amorphous “Accretion Vases” are hand-thrown and altered, diminishing their initial symmetry in favor of the strange and absurd. Their lower sections are covered with stalagmite-like protrusions and the necks protrude like sexual organs with the texture of rusted metal. Linda Lopez’s Asphalt Dust Furry with Gold Rocks appears to grow and multiply organically. Throughout her practice, Lopez imbues inanimate objects with energy and tangible emotion, using clay and metallic glazes to achieve playful, anthropomorphizing effects.
Finally, the sale includes an architectural installation by Edmund De Waal, Certosa III. This monochromatic ceramic work both exudes natural elegance and explores connections between the human body, object, and space. De Waal’s influences range from Bauhaus aesthetics to medieval Chinese ceramics; his practice bridging East and West via porcelain. Certosa III, named after an Italian word for monastery, exemplifies the essential beauty of his handmade vessels, and the hypnotic rhythm they establish when set against a horizontal plane.
