OFF-SITE EXHIBITION
KILN IT
Curated by Jacob Rhodes
kate Bancroft
Rachel Frank
Amanda Nedham
Lisa Schilling
Opening Reception: Fri, May 17th, 6-8 pm
Dates: May 17th – June 16, 2019
Hours: Wed-Sat 11-6, Sun 1-6
@Massey Klein Gallery
124 Forsyth St.
New York, 10002
Massey Klein Gallery and Field Projects are pleased to present “Kiln It”.
The four artists in “Kiln It” employ a primordial material that is attached to the origin of human creativity: clay, and its transformation through fire, ceramics.
Rachel Frank’s rhyton vessels are sculptures based on ancient Eurasian offering vessels. These ceramic sculptures imagine how ancient ritual forms may play roles in new ceremonies relating to climate change and environmental issues.
In Kate Bancroft’s vessels, self-portrait and narrative, in the tradition of ancient Greek amphoras are used to lay splay an internal pink void; a yawning chasm of thirsty surrealism.
Amanda Nedham deploys clay to exploit the democratic materials of cigarettes and soap. This metaphor of stasis is playfully held together in a peacekeeper’s depiction of wildlife: Nubian giraffe, Savanna hare, Asiatic black bear, etc., to create a plein air sculpture.
Lisa Schilling’s work begins with a material exploration in the kiln. The material dictates the final shape dependent on its ability to pass: raw clay with an underglaze rind as marbled meats; test tiles as shark teeth. The limits of this pass-ability is pushed further in Schilling’s Projector Series, where she combines the slaughter house with the grindhouse. Film projectors that appear to be cobbled out of sausage links and/or human organs are at once bodily, consumption for the body, and machines of projection.
All these primordial representations must survive the fires of the Kiln: the documents decay and crystalize into new shapes, new materials, and new meanings outside of the artist’s hand.