NEW YORK CITY — Friedman Benda gallery hosted Adam Silverman’s first solo exhibition in New York. His uneven show, Ground Control (New York City, May 5 – June 11, 2016) presented an entirely new body of work, including a site-specific installation that demonstrates the variety of forms and surfaces Silverman has created over his 14-year career. The show was accompanied by a catalogue with contributions by Nader Tehrani and Brooke Hodge.
Above image: Adam Silverman, Untitled, 2016, stoneware and burnt wood, 12 x 12 x 12 inches
The Los Angeles-based artist has explored different means of creation in architecture and fashion before focusing on clay. This path is evident in Ground Control. In each medium Silverman engages the human body as reference, subject and tool.
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Adam Silverman, Untitled, 2016, stoneware and denim
The wheel throwing process is an essential part of Silverman’s practice. His forms are strong and deliberate. They command attention whether they are egg shaped with delicately smooth walls or asymmetrical and aggressively punched or punctured. His glazing and throwing practices are rooted in precision and tradition, while embracing experimentation, improvisation and chance. Treating his pots and sculptures like three-dimensional canvases with elaborate glazing techniques, every piece represents both a fresh start and a moment on a continuum.
From 2008 to 2010 Silverman collaborated with Nader Tehrani on Boolean Valley, a conceptual, installation piece that traveled from the San Jose Museum of Art to MOCA Los Angeles, to the Nasher Sculpture Center, in which they made a cone-shaped form on the wheel, slip cast it 200 times, then cut each cone horizontally in two and laid out the resulting 400 pieces as a complicated, topographic, landscape installation that responded to each of the architectural spaces within which is was installed.
Adam Silverman, Untitled, 2016, stoneware and wood, 26.25 x 13.5 x 13.5 inches
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In 2013 Silverman had a major museum show at The Laguna Art Museum in Laguna Beach California. The show was part retrospective and part newly commissioned installation pieces, including two video collaborations. Also in 2013 an artists monograph; Adam Silverman Ceramics was published by Skira Rizzoli.
Adam Silverman was born in 1963 in New York, NY and received a BFA and a Bachelors of Architecture from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1987 and 1988. He served as the Los Angeles studio director of Heath Ceramics from January 2009 to May 2014. His work is included in the permanent collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA; the Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas, TX; the Israel Museum, Jerusalem, Israel; and the Museum of Contemporary Craft, Portland, OR. Since beginning his professional ceramic career in 2002, he has exhibited regularly in Japan.
Text (edited) and images courtesy of the gallery.
Adam Silverman, Untitled, 2016, stoneware and burnt wood, 28 x 14.5 x 14.5 inches
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Adam Silverman, Untitled, 2016
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Was this a review?
A very good question, and the answer is no. Some exhibition posts just tell that it has happened. Actual reviews have a different tone. The Silverman post simply says; this is the show, here is how the gallery is pitching it, and at the end, what you think? Some shows drive us to review them and others don’t. Some galleries and museums provide us with exceptional texts by talented art writers and if they do the job well, why duplicate the effort? (not this case, its pretty neutral.) Some are pure hyperbole and we don’t use them. Also to make it clearer we note in the post that the text is from the gallery. Why do we only review some shows and not others? The reasons are several including too small a staff, or a show that is interesting enough to post but does not call out for a review. Or a similar show was reviewed a year before. Part news, part critique. The readers of cfile.daily would like to hear from you about your feelings concerning this show. Good, bad, indifferent?