NEW YORK CITY & VENICE, Italy––A precursor to the artist’s solo exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara opening August 1, 2019, Brian Rochefort’s COLLAPSE features the artist’s massive, caldera-like vessels with their inquisitive surface treatment––each in languid repose following their repeated frenetic alchemy and metamorphosis in the kiln. Their magma, cooled and encrusted, only allude to the artist’s tactile practice kneading and shaping their initial form.
On view at Caterina Tognon in Venice in conjunction with Van Doren Waxter (May 8 – July 28th, 2019) “pushes the formal and technical confines of the medium into new territories of freedom, invention, and play,” the Caterina Tognon writes, adding his newest efforts showcase Rochefort’s technical explorations in color and texture, a slow progression towards a larger scale of each form. Rochefort states each crater is build up of so many layers of mud and slip, which he then breaks, builds back up again, fires airbrushes, and glazes––and then repeats over and over and over with “as many glazes as possible until I can’t fire anymore.”
“These represent massive ‘craters,’ as if erupting with the energy of a volcanic explosion, suddenly active, with all the colors of exemplary American painting of the 20th century.”
Caterina Tognon
About the artist: Brian Rochefort (b.1985) was educated at Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) and currently lives and works in Los Angeles. In January 2019, he participated in The Mistake Room artist residency and project in Guadalajara, Mexico. Rochefort recently had a solo exhibition at Sorry We’re Closed in Brussels, Belgium. Recent group exhibitions include The Cabin, Los Angeles; Steve Turner Gallery, Los Angeles; and Retrospective Gallery, Hudson, NY. Rochefort’s works have been included in recent museum survey exhibitions such as From Funk to Punk: Left Coast Ceramics at the Everson Museum of Art in Syracuse, NY and Regarding George Ohr at Boca Raton Museum of Art, FL, where his productions were shown alongside pioneering artists working in ceramics such as Ron Nagle, Ken Price, and Kathy Butterly artists whom Rochefort names as prominent influences in his own practice.
View the presentation at Caterina Tognon here.
Preview Rochefort’s upcomingMCASB exhibition here.
Read more from Cfile.Daily on Brian Rochefort here.
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Was just there a couple days ago– the photos don’t quite do the work justice. The textures are enthralling. I’m excited to see where Brian goes next.