Exhibition | Traverse Textures and Colors with Ron Nagle’s ‘Amended Testimony’

LONDON — We know we recently wrote about Ron Nagle, but we just can’t get enough of this prolific artist especially with his latest exhibition Amended Testimony (June 2 – July 8, 2017) at Modern Art.

“It looked, to my eye, grotesque, then psychedelic, then uncomfortably erotic, and then all of those things at once. Slick, shiny surfaces glide over rough lunar terrain and neon gradients threaten to clash, but Nagle always buoys his mayhem with steady elegance” – Andrew Russeth, Art News.

For over five decades, Ron Nagle has produced a plethora of sculptural works. Each was created using a variety of materials and arrangements of contrasting forms, colors and textures drawing on influences such as the paintings and drawings of Giorgio Morandi, Philip Guston, Josef Albers, the custom cars and hot rods of the West Coast and Wabi-Sabi qualities of Japanese Momoyama ceramics, Modern Art writes.

Nagle began to work with ceramics while a student at high school in the 1950s, leading him to work alongside Peter Voulkos at the University of California, Berkeley. It was following this period that his own work was first shown alongside the abstract expressionist sculptures of Voulkos, as well as the work of Ken Price and John Mason, each of whom contributed to the redefinition of clay as a fine art medium unconfined to orthodox ceramics, known as the California Clay Movement.

Do you love or loathe these works from the worlds of contemporary ceramic art and contemporary ceramic art? Let us know what you think in the comments.