Exhibitions In Brief | Selections from Art Los Angeles Contemporary 2016

It’s our goal to cover as much of the contemporary ceramics world as possible.It pains us to let an exhibition go unmentioned.So in order to scoop up as many worthy shows as we can, we run this column, “Exhibitions in Brief.”This week we are featuring works from the Art Los Angeles Contemporary 2016 (Santa Monica, CA), a contemporary art fair running in its 7th year that showcases emerging galleries from around the world, highlighting Los Angeles galleries.The fair also hosts series of artist talks, performances, panel discussions, and film screenings.This year the fair was held January 28 – 31.Working with both figurative and vessel imagery, often integrating both within her installations, Elizabeth Jaeger creates domestic spaces that hold a human presence with her life-sized figures, which are very reminiscent of sex dolls.These figures are unsettling in the most beautiful way, raw in their making, but also so physically and actively present with their evocative movements and facial expressions.Her piece, Platinum Musing I, is a perfect example of how the artist is “trying to create a space where there’s something unspecific that’s gone wrong, but there are no answers to what it could be, or what, as a viewer, you could do.”

Jaeger makes the majority of her figures mostly white with very fair features, such as blonde hair, blue and green eyes, and very fleshy, white skin.Occasionally Jaeger will sculpt a body that is all black, but leaving the features still to be very Anglo-Saxon: petite figures, slender facial features, but with black skin and black, wavy hair.Her work is an interesting anomaly of being both empty and static, while also simultaneously energizing the space these figures live in.Jaeger lives and works in Brooklyn, New York and is represented by Jack Hanley Gallery in NYC.Obsessed with designer labels and the prestige that comes by wearing and owning them, Australian artist Michael Zavros‘ work features multi-media photographs and paintings of the artist, young girls, and Georgian model, Sean O’Pry.His work deals with the idea of beauty, self-obsession, and vanity.While this is a self portrait, it is the model, Sean O’Pry, who is portrayed as the saint.In an article featured in Art Monthly Australia, Zavros’ Self portrait as a saint with Sean O’Pry/Versace 2015, the halo coming from a Versace-designed dinner plate, is described by writer Peter McKay as:

“Harnessed, repurposed and transacted in the mode of a (fashion) empire, other qualities of beauty such as temperament, character and wisdom are drawn into question by the motive for production – such an image conveys something extra to what is beautiful in the world. In emblazoning his name as author on the slightly ragged T-shirt worn by O’Pry, Zavros produces an image that would usually cost a fashion house tens of thousands of dollars, if not more. Yet judging from the T-shirt the ‘label’ looks rather homemade, skint even. This to some extent improbable endorsement is perhaps constructed precisely to illustrate the role of money in the creation of beauty, as well as to fashion a shock of complicity on both the count of artist and model. Perhaps the artist and model are hesitant to grant the viewer their beauty in this context, too, and instead mildly taunt the system that they do so well by.”

Zavros’ work has been exhibited in major museums throughout Australia, New Zealand, Asia, and Europe.He is represented by StarkWhite in New Zealand.

Interested in the interplay of the three-dimensional vs.the two-dimensional, Rachel de Joode explores the relationship of the physicality of the work as translated into a two-dimensional image.By cropping the image down to the inherent qualities of the medium (the finger imprints left behind and the cracking that occurs from movement) and transforming the depth of the material into a flattened reality, de Joode transforms sculptures into printed images and arranges them back into a physical sculpture once again.Breaking away from the conventions of painting, de Joode’s sculptures are not hung statically to the wall.Instead, gravity is allowed to work for itself, complementing the lightness that is brought from the captured image.

This exchange of realities is certainly working to her benefit.She is represented by Neumeister Bar-Am in Berlin.

Inspired by the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art’s artifact collections, Ry Rocklen spent a week taking pictures and looking for antiquities that he would then respond to sculpturally, limiting his selection to eight works.He went with an Iranian 3rd millennium B.C. purse, an Egyptian 1857 B.C. bust of River King Sonwosret III, and an Iranian 7th-6th century statue of a handywoman, to name a few.These objects were resurrected in stone, cast in ceramic, and then molded in clay; the images of the artifacts were then decaled-glazed onto the surface.You can find Rocklen’s Metropolitan audio tour describing his process here.In Handywoman, Iran, 7th-6th Century B.C., 2015, Rocklen was inspired by the tactile quality of the original maker’s hand, especially in the nose, chin, and hand areas.The mirror behind the sculpture reflects the contemporary equivalent of the artifact in front of it.Wanting to transform the backside of the vessel, Rocklen cast his fingers interlocking with the fingers of his “sweetheart,” Carolyn.Often using found objects in his other sculptural work, Rocklen also cast a thrift store wooden necklace with seashell pendant as the necklace for the back of the handywoman.He is represented by Feuer/Mesler in NYC.San Francisco based artist Guy Overfelt rips into the art of the bong with his fully functional pieces that come with custom case and glass stem.He recommends to “buy and rip it.” Overfelt packs his bongs with the visual language of Picasso’s famous ceramic vessels and at first glance one might even assume these vessels are Picassos, adding to Overfelt’s intention of stealing past ideas in order to improve upon them.You can find more of his artful bongs here.This body of work is vastly different from Overfelt’s usual oeuvre of classic American archetypes featuring objects such as cars, beer, and neon lights.Overfelt lives and works in San Francisco and Bolinas, California.He is represented by Ever Gold (San Francisco, CA).DIY artist and NASA enthusiast, Tom Sachs, engages high art with disposable consumer culture, critiquing the capitalist ideals we buy into as a country of replacing the relatively new with the even newer new.Using icons by which his viewers would already be familiar with, Sachs uses our desensitivity to those highly recognized brands to his advantage, letting them assimilate naturally into our everyday lives.Self-described as a bricolage artist, Sachs is intensely dedicated to DIY and the processes behind his fiercely labor-intensive projects.The main focus of his work is his fascination with NASA and all things outer space.His wabi-sabi porcelain NASA cups are suggestive of kitschy gift shop takeaways one would get at a space museum.Sachs is represented by Sperone Westwater (NYC), Gagosian Gallery (Beverly Hills, CA), Tomio Koyama Gallery (Tokyo, Japan), Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac Paris (Paris, France), Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac Salzburg (Salzburg, Austria), Baldwin Gallery (Aspen, Colorado), and Ever Gold (San Francisco, CA).All works above were featured at the Art Los Angeles Contemporary 2016 (Santa Monica, CA), on view January 28 – 31, 2016.What do you think of this assortment of contemporary ceramics?Let us know in the comments.