For his first New York solo exhibition, Los Angeles based artist Matthias Merkel Hess presented a diverse collection of ceramic and paper objects entitled Hereafter. The show at Salon 94 Freeman (June 20 – August 9, 2013) used a setup that was somewhere in between storage and shrine, the artist installed a body of work that builds on his previous Bucketry pieces, where he remade plastic vessels in clay. For Hereafter he added household appliances, toys, and food items to his repertoire of containers, that range from an Original Mr. Coffee, vintage DustBuster, KitchenAid Stand Mixer, SuperSoaker SS-50, Mr. Potato Head, a Froggy Toddler Potty and a rubber chicken to stick deodorant, duct tape and every spoon in his apartment rendered in ceramic.
In a New York Times piece, “Ceramics That Make the Afterlife More Fun” (June 19th, 2013), Rima Suqi asked Hess to elaborate on the show’s theme, “Hereafter”. Hess responded,
There’s a very rich history of pottery not made as art, but made for ceremonial or ritual use, like funerary items. The things left in tombs are often made of precious metals and ceramics, whether in China or Mexico. I was looking at all these different traditions and making my own version of that. For the show, I tried to stick with reproductions of plastic things, but I’d done the KitchenAid mixer, so I added the DustBuster and the Oster blender and also a Mr. Potato Head. It fits in with my previous work but pushes it in a new direction. We don’t have this tradition of burying people with stuff anymore, but in a weird way each artist is making their own version of that. These are things that, if taken care of and not smashed to pieces, will outlast me.
Amy Albracht is the General Editor at CFile.
above: Hereafter by Matthias Merkel Hess at Salon 94 Freemans. Photography courtesy of Salon 94
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