Yingge Ceramics Museum (Taiwan) invites artists, curators, and collectives to submit exhibition proposals for its 2027 exhibition program. Seeking solo, group, and curatorial projects, the Museum offers a professional platform for contemporary ceramic practice and international exchange, with exhibitions taking place in two of its galleries. The open call runs until January 31, 2026, with selected projects announced in March 2026.

As part of the 6th International Ceramics Triennial UNICUM 2026, Center Rog (Ljubljana) has launched a dedicated open call for the exhibition Ceramic Form and Function: Beyond Use. Distinct from the Triennial’s artistic ceramics program, this exhibition focuses on functional and design ceramics that rethink use, form, and everyday living, from tableware and lighting to architectural and sculptural objects. Ceramic artists and designers worldwide are invited to apply. Applications are due January 7, 2026.

Hochschule für Gestaltung (HfG) Offenbach is inviting applications for RESIDENCY 5.0: exploring porcelain, an international residency program hosted at the historic Höechster Porzellan-Manufaktur in Frankfurt, Germany. Aimed at artists and designers with strong experience in ceramics, the four-month residency (April 15 – August 15, 2026) supports experimental research in porcelain. Four selected residents will receive a studio, accommodation, a €1,000 monthly stipend, production support, and access to advanced facilities. Applications are open to international applicants until January 5, 2026.

Several deadlines to submit work for ceramic competitions and fairs are approaching in the coming weeks. Applications close soon for the Jingdezhen International Ceramic Art Biennale 2026 (December 25, 2025), the Austrian Pottery Market 2026 and the Carouge International Ceramics Competition 2026 (both December 31, 2025), followed in January by the Biennale of Contemporary Keramics in Greece (January 10), the International Ceramics Days Oldenburg (January 11), Argillà Italia (January 12), Terralha – European Ceramic Festival (January 15), and the Höhr-Grenzhausen Ceramics Market (January 18). Discover all these events in our 2026 Calendar.

Artists based in Canada are invited to apply for the 2026 Winifred Shantz Award for Ceramics, a national award supporting emerging ceramic artists. Presented by the Canadian Clay & Glass Gallery in partnership with the Keith and Winifred Shantz Fund for the Arts, the award is open to artists with 5-10 years of professional practice. The winner receives $10,000, with additional prizes for a runner-up and finalists, and inclusion in a 2026 group exhibition at the gallery. Applications are due January 25, 2026.

A-B Projects is offering New Wave Scholarships for students and recent graduates that cover enrollment in their monthly Studio Sessions for 2026. Studio Sessions are an online platform where an intimate group of artists gather weekly for 4 weeks under the guidance of a lead artist to discuss specific ideas and experiment with how those ideas can take form in clay. Upcoming sessions: Kelly Devitt in January, Berenice Hernández in February, and Nathan Lynch in March.

Book recommendation: Shaping Global Masterpieces. Published by the International Academy of Ceramics, the book brings together reflections and works by 35 artists from 21 countries, offering insight into contemporary ceramic practices worldwide. Through reflections, creative processes, and technical information, the book celebrates artistic excellence while reflecting the Academy’s mission to foster dialogue, exchange, and international collaboration in ceramics.

Ceramics Jobs Board:

• Georgia State University (Atlanta, GA) is hiring an Assistant Professor of Ceramics
• University of Nebraska-Lincoln (Lincoln, NE) is hiring an Assistant Professor of Ceramics
• University of New Mexico (Gallup, NM) is hiring an Assistant Professor of Ceramics

Exhibitions

Discover these ceramic exhibitions that were recently featured in Ceramics Now.

• Fernando Casasempere: Ruins at Fred Levine, Bruton
• Martin Woll Godal: Sequence at Bomuldsfabriken Kunsthall, Arendal
• Jim Melchert: Where the Boundaries Are at di Rosa Center for Contemporary Art, San Francisco
• Samuel Sarmiento: Relical Horn at Andrew Edlin Gallery, New York

What’s on View

A selection of ceramic exhibitions currently on view around the world.

1. Andile Dyalvane: iNgqweji at Southern Guild, Cape Town
2. Celia Vásquez Yui: Indigenous Futurism at Mindy Solomon Gallery, Miami
3. Linda Lighton: Love & War, A Fifty-Year Survey, 1975-2025 at Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Overland Park, KS
4. Nils Erik Gjerdevik: Spaces of Possibilities at CLAY Museum of Ceramic Art Denmark, Middelfart
5. Kuniko Kinoto: Dislocation Loop​ at ATLA, Los Angeles
6. Kevin Umaña: Moonglow Metanoia at The Pit, Los Angeles
7. Chris Rijk: Sex, drugs and earthenware at Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem and Chris Rijksmuseum at Museum W, Weert
8. Fiat Ignis III: Let There Be Fire at Gallery 60, New York
9. HOUSE at County Hall Pottery, London

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Featured image – Andile Dyalvane: iNgqweji at Southern Guild, Cape Town

Posted on December 16, 2025

The Ernest G. Welch School of Art & Design at Georgia State University invites applications for a tenure-track position in Ceramics at the rank of assistant professor. This is a full-time appointment with an anticipated start date of August 2026.

Position Summary
We seek a candidate who is an outstanding artist and an enthusiastic educator, with a strong desire to enhance the program and to foster excellence in our students. The successful candidate should demonstrate a commitment to excellence in research, program/curriculum planning and development, and must value working with student populations from all backgrounds and cultural perspectives in teaching and research.

Georgia State University is a national model for innovation and opening opportunities for all, among the top five most innovative by U.S. News & World Report, ranked 1st among public universities in undergraduate teaching, the number 1 nonprofit university to award bachelor’s degrees to African American students, 4th in the country for its first-year student experience, and highly ranked for enabling the social and economic mobility of its students. Among the most diverse universities in the nation, Georgia State opens global perspectives as the number 1 U.S. public university sending African American students to study abroad. A regional gateway to higher education, the five suburban Perimeter College campuses provide more than 30 associate degree pathways. The downtown Atlanta campus offers more than 250 degree programs in 100 fields of study at the undergraduate, graduate and first-professional degree levels.

Department: EG Welch School of Art & Desig
College: College of the Arts
Campus: Atlanta
Posting Type: Internal/External

Responsibilities

The selected candidate will be responsible for maintaining an active research/creative agenda, teaching undergraduate and graduate courses in Ceramics and Three-Dimensional Studies, advising BFA and MFA students, assisting in the general management of the ceramic’s studio, and participating in service at the school, college, and university levels. Teaching load for the first three years is four courses (2/2) and five thereafter (3/2).

Required Experience
Professional work that reflects a high level of technical ability and an understanding of and interest in contemporary issues in the field of ceramics and/or the broader field of art

Required Education: MFA in Ceramics by the time of appointment.

Preferred Qualifications/Experience
• A research and/or exhibition record reflecting a commitment to professional development appropriate to a tenure track position at an R1 University
• Evidence of quality teaching at the university level to students of all backgrounds
• Ability to teach hand building and throwing techniques, and ceramic materials (clay and glaze chemistry)
• Ability to fire and maintain gas and electric kilns;
• Good writing and speaking skills interest in and ability to utilize new and emerging digital technologies in the field

Pre-Employment Requirements: A criminal background check is required.

Salary: 70,000 – 75.000
Desired Start Date: 08/01/2026
Review of Applications Begins: 02/28/2026
Close Date: 04/01/2026
Open Until Filled: No

Special Instructions Summary

Review of applications will begin immediately and continue until the position is filled. To ensure consideration, submit all materials April 1, 2026. Applicants should submit:
• a letter of application addressing the required and preferred qualifications and experience;
• a curriculum vitae;
• a statement of teaching philosophy and interests;
• a portfolio with 20 images of current studio work and an artist statement;
• a portfolio with 20 images of student work from courses taught and sample syllabi

Please note documents have a size limit of 20 MB, for documents exceeding the size please use Other Documents 1, 2, and or 3.

Should you be recommended for a position, an offer of employment will be conditional on background verification and the submission of three hardcopy letters of recommendation.

For further information about the position, contact Search Chair, Associate Professor Darien Arikoski-Johnson at dajohnson@gsu.edu

Equal Opportunity Employment Statement
Georgia State University is an equal opportunity employer.

USG Core Values Statement
The University System of Georgia is comprised of our 26 institutions of higher education and learning, as well the System Office. Our USG Statement of Core Values are Integrity, Excellence, Accountability, and Respect. These values serve as the foundation for all that we do as an organization, and each USG community member is responsible for demonstrating and upholding these standards.

Georgia State University is an Equal Opportunity Employer and does not discriminate against applicants due to race, ethnicity, gender, veteran status, or on the basis of disability or any other federal, state or local protected class.

Posted on December 16, 2025

The School of Art, Art History, and Design at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln (UNL) invites applications for a full-time, tenure-track Assistant Professor in Ceramics, beginning August 2026. This position will teach and mentor students in the B.A., B.F.A., and M.F.A. programs.

We seek an experienced artist and educator with a strong commitment to teaching and a dynamic, active studio practice in ceramics. The successful candidate will engage students in critical dialogue, support their conceptual development, and contribute to the advancement of contemporary ceramic practice within our community. This position includes teaching, mentoring, service, and continued creative research and professional development. We are looking for someone with strong organizational, communication, and collaboration skills. This candidate will have knowledge of ceramic history and contemporary theory and possess the ability to teach drawing.

Key Responsibilities
· Teach two courses per semester, primarily in ceramics (additional teaching in drawing or related areas based on expertise).
· Advise and mentor undergraduate and graduate students.
· Serve on graduate thesis committees.
· Contribute to curriculum development and program growth.
· Maintain ceramics facilities and support their ongoing development.
· Participate in school and college service.
· Assist with recruiting and promoting the ceramics program nationally.

UNL Ceramics has a strong tradition in functional pottery and the vessel while embracing a broad range of aesthetic and conceptual approaches. We seek a colleague who can contribute new energy, ideas, and expertise to this nationally recognized program.

Areas of interest may include, but are not limited to:
· Contemporary pottery and vessel making.
· Conceptual and interdisciplinary approaches to ceramics.
· Digital fabrication technologies (e.g., 3D modeling, printing, mold-making) in ceramic processes.

The University of Nebraska offers an attractive compensation and benefits package, commensurate with the successful candidate’s background and experience. Faculty status with opportunities for promotion in rank and sabbatical opportunities for continued learning and professional development are additional key benefits.

About the School and University

The School of Art, Art History & Design is an accredited member of the National Association of Schools of Art and Design (NASAD) and offers nationally ranked undergraduate and graduate programs. As part of a Big Ten land-grant university, we support interdisciplinary exploration and provide significant opportunities for creative research.

Located in downtown Lincoln, the university sits in a vibrant and growing city with a thriving arts scene, affordable living, and high quality of life. Nearby cultural resources include the Sheldon Museum of Art, the Lied Center for Performing Arts, the International Quilt Museum, and many independent art venues.

Minimum Qualifications
· M.F.A. or equivalent terminal degree in Ceramics.
· Two years of college level teaching experience beyond a graduate assistantship.
· Active exhibition record at the national level.
· Demonstrated understanding of contemporary ceramic practice.
· Expertise in at least one of the following:
— Wheel throwing vessels.
— Interdisciplinary or conceptual approaches in ceramics.
— 3D digital technologies applied to ceramics.

Preferred Qualifications
· Five or more years of full-time university-level teaching.
· Experience mentoring graduate students from diverse backgrounds.
· Evidence of national or international recognition through exhibitions, grants, or publications.
· Experience with departmental or institutional service and leadership.
· Technical expertise in maintaining and repairing ceramics equipment (pottery wheels, gas/electric kilns, etc.).
· Experience teaching glaze formulation and ceramic material studies.

Application Process

The search committee will begin formal review of applications on January 6, 2026, and will continue until an appointment is made. Interested applicants must first go to https://employment.unl.edu, requisition F_250082. Click “Apply for this Job,” complete the faculty information form, and upload the following required documents:
· Cover letter addressing the minimum and preferred qualifications and your interest in the position.
· Curriculum vitae.
· Names and contact information for three professional references.
· Combined research and teaching statement (1–2 pages each). Upload as “Other Document.”
· Link to online portfolio including:
— Up to 20 images of your recent work.
— Up to 20 images of recent student work.

The University of Nebraska does not discriminate based on race, color, ethnicity, national origin, sex, pregnancy, sexual orientation, gender identity, religion, disability, age, genetic information, veteran status, marital status, and/or political affiliation in its programs, activities, or employment.

Posted on December 12, 2025

The University of New Mexico-Gallup invites applications for a full-time Assistant Professor of Ceramics to begin in August 2026. We are one of four branch community colleges of the University of New Mexico and serve approximately 2200 students. Located in Gallup NM, approximately 138 miles west of Albuquerque, UNM-Gallup is situated in the Four Corners region and near the Navajo Nation, Zuni Pueblo, and Hopi Reservation. The city of Gallup has a population of 22,000 and the surrounding areas provide an abundance of outdoor recreational activities, various museums and extraordinary cultural vibrancy, while maintaining a small-town feel.

UNM-Gallup serves a hugely diverse student population with 100+ full time and part-time faculty members. We are fully accredited by the Higher Learning Commission offering Associate degrees, selected Bachelor’s degrees, Career Technical Education certificate programs, and adult basic education (ABE/GED), workforce training and personal enrichment courses. UNM-Gallup serves multiple high school populations including McKinley Academy, Middle College High School, and the Center for Career and Technical Education.

It is an exciting time to join our faculty as we are expanding our programs, engaging with our community, establishing multiple endowments, and grant opportunities while hiring a substantial cohort of new faculty. Faculty at UNM-G have career advancement opportunities that are outlined in the UNM Faculty Handbook and faculty union collective bargaining agreement.

The successful candidate will be expected to teach 24 credits per academic year in the area of Ceramics (4 courses in both the spring and fall semesters, of equivalent), maintain an active scholarship/service record (as defined by the UA-UNM CBA), participate in monthly Division meetings, and execute other relevant duties as agreed upon in conjunction with the division chair in an annual faculty-chair agreement.

Qualifications

Minimum Qualifications:
• Masters in Fine Arts degree (MFA) with an emphasis/focus on Ceramics.

Preferred Qualifications:
• Experience teaching lower-level Ceramics courses
• College-level teaching experience at a branch community college or similar institution
• Demonstrated commitment to cultivate an understanding of the rich and varied cultures of New Mexico and to the success of the university’s mission to serve local and global communities

Application Instructions
Only applications submitted through the official UNMJobs site will be accepted. If you are viewing this job advertisement on a 3rd party site, please visit UNMJobs to submit an application.

To apply, please attach the following required materials to your online application via UNMJobs (unmjobs.unm.edu)
• A letter of interest
• A current Curriculum Vitae
• Graduate Transcripts
• Teaching Philosophy
• Three professional references: name, title, email, phone number

Each of these items MUST be uploaded to your online application for applicant consideration. PLEASE NOTE: When submitting your application materials, please ensure all attachments are uploaded in PDF format for optimal viewing and processing.

Finalists selected for an on-campus interview will be expected to give a teaching demonstration (approximately 20-30 minutes) to the division faculty on a relevant subject of their choosing.

Applicants who are appointed to a UNM faculty position are required to provide an official certification of successful completion of all degree requirements prior to their initial employment with UNM.

For Best Consideration
For best consideration, please apply by 1/9/2026. This position will remain open until filled.

Employment Type: Faculty
Faculty Type: Tenure/Tenure-Track
Academic Location: Gallup Branch

Benefits Eligible
The University of New Mexico provides a comprehensive package of benefits including medical, dental, vision, and life insurance. In addition, UNM offers educational benefits through the tuition remission and dependent education programs. See the Benefits home page for more information.

At the core of Gordon Baldwin’s practice lies a tireless curiosity: among the most original voices in modern British ceramics, the artist was able to transform a traditional language into a territory of formal and poetic experimentation. After his demise in May 2025, Baldwin leaves behind a vast body of work. His practice is nourished by a continuous dialogue with art history, especially that of the later twentieth century. In a life spent between teaching – at Eton College as well as Goldsmiths College and the Royal College of Art – and artistic research, Baldwin began experimenting by directing his practice toward works with a functional character, until shaping the traits of a fully autonomous sculptural investigation that reveals him as a multifaceted artist, capable of weaving sculpture, drawing, poetry and music into a single coherent vision.

The exhibition Little Hard Clouds Becoming Vessels, held at Fondazione Officine Saffi and organised in collaboration with Kunstverein in Hamburg and Corvi–Mora, London, presents itself as a retrospective dedicated to Baldwin’s rich practice. Since its founding in 2011, the Milan-based foundation represents a key institution for ceramic research, fostering dialogues between historical perspectives and future-oriented experimentation, so it is no coincidence that Baldwin’s first exhibition takes place here in particular. The project investigates the wide range of visual and conceptual styles the artist developed over many decades, moving between abstraction, reflection, and a deep attention to how materials behave. Word, form and silence are in constant dialogue, creating compositions where inner experience and outside reality come together.

The display presents a large selection of ceramic sculptures arranged without chronological order across three central platforms, each composed of steel plates supported by bricks. This simple arrangement gives the works an almost floating quality, letting their shapes and shadows seem suspended, like small clouds or pieces of a hanging landscape. Alongside the sculptures, a concise group of drawings from 2016–2017 introduces a second register of Baldwin’s late production, revealing how drawing eventually became his primary form of expression.

Varying in shape and size, the structure of the ceramic works recalls the typical shape of the vase or container, with surfaces marked by holes, gaps, and narrow openings, giving the impression of an interior that is partly exposed and partly concealed. This repeating morphology represents a basic key element, to the point of becoming a key theme of the artist’s research: the so-called vessel, which appears in many titles of his works, and corresponds with a hollow structure embodying the idea of inner and inhabited space. Often glazed in black, the heart of the sculptures becomes a fragile space where thoughts and emotions gather, forming the protected and complex center of the human experience.

While black evokes secrecy and introspection, accessible only through fine splits in the surface, it also generates a sense of protection and quietude. The dark core becomes a welcoming space, capable of absorbing complexity and sheltering vulnerability. The outer surfaces, on the other hand, often feature neutral or bright glazes and traces of decorative or gestural marks, which lighten the heaviness of the dark interior. This contrast between the dark inside and the bright outside highlights the boundary between what is personal and what is shared, between hidden depth and visible form. Baldwin’s works often evoke an ambivalent response. While the viewer is free to project personal visual memory onto the forms, they may also consciously inspire a second, darker, and more mysterious voice. Baldwin himself acknowledges this emotional duality:

Silence, in particular, is understood by the artist as a form of creative suggestion: where silence exists, form has not yet emerged, and it is precisely in that suspension that the possibility of creation lies. This idea is vividly embodied in a 1988 photograph by Fi McGhee, published in Crafts magazine alongside an interview by Tanya Harrod. The image depicts Baldwin surrounded by his works in his studio, absorbed in quiet dialogue with the objects that, in turn, seemed to guide his hand. The atmosphere reflects the thoughtful approach behind his work, showing how each piece developed from a careful connection between the material, the space, and his inner rhythm.

Throughout his career, Baldwin cultivated a close bond between visual form and written word: from his earliest studies, poetry was an enormous reference, leading him to produce a significant number of poetic texts presented in the new catalogue Inscape, published by Kunstverein in Hamburg and Edward Hutchison, which for the first time places side by side the two art forms that most inspired him.

Nature plays a central role in this dialogue between poetry and form: Baldwin’s early writings often evoke the sea, wind, rocks, and coastal landscapes. These elements later return in his sculptures through smooth shapes, textured surfaces that recall worn stone, or dark glazes that suggest volcanic cliffs. The landscape becomes both a real and symbolic starting point, a place where the outer world meets inner reflection. It is no coincidence that the context of the United Kingdom, where Baldwin lived and worked throughout his life, plays a decisive role in his research. Among the most significant places is a beach in North Wales, renamed by him The Place of Stones, discovered almost by chance but destined to become a pivotal point of his creative vision: the rocks, of murky and sinuous forms and large dimensions, serve as mirrors for the creation of various shapes; the dark, volcanic color of the cliffs inspired his important exploration of black glazes, whose shiny or matte finishes create different effects, making the works look as if they were made from different materials.

Baldwin’s works, particularly those with more rounded shapes, were usually made by hand first and then further shaped with molds. The firing process was often repeated many times, as he fired the piece and then added new layers of glaze or pigment, and put it back in the kiln, repeating this until he achieved the material and visual qualities he wanted. Central to this methodology is the concept of inscape, coined by the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins and adopted by Baldwin as a conceptual pillar. Defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as “the unique inner nature or essence of a person, place, or thing”, the inscape describes how inner essence manifests outwardly in a tangible form. Baldwin’s works, whether sculptural or written, can be seen as physical manifestations of inner landscapes: containers for what is most intimate, complex and irreducible.

Every surface of the sculptures bears traces of his creative process: rather than smooth or polished, they keep incisions, cuts, faint lines that testify to their making. These marks record the artist’s total abandonment of functionality in his objects. From the late 1950s onward, Baldwin moved decisively away from functional pottery toward an approach that embraced an art-oriented gaze. His artistic formation took place during a period of significant transformation in British sculpture. In the early 1950s, Herbert Read described a new generation of postwar sculptors under the label Geometry of Fear, identifying works distinguished by tension, fragmentation and existential unease. Teachers such as Eduardo Paolozzi and William Turnbull exposed Baldwin to this environment, which encouraged him to see ceramics not as a separate craft tradition but as a medium capable of engaging directly with contemporary sculptural concerns.

Among the works on display, Tall Standing Form, signed and dated 1985, exemplifies these influences with particular efficiency: with its vertical tension and deep blue glaze, the work assumes an anthropomorphic presence, almost recalling a totem. The work Developed Bottle (1989), part of a series begun in the 1960s, engages explicitly with Umberto Boccioni’s Sviluppo di una bottiglia nello spazio (1912). While Boccioni’s Futurist object dissolves into the surrounding environment through its dynamism, Baldwin’s interpretation keeps a clarity of outline, maintaining the vessel as a self-contained yet expressive form. Several works belong to the series Painting in a Form of a Bowl, began in the 1980s, where Baldwin further explores the boundary between ceramics and painting. Here, the vessel becomes a support for marks, colours and gestures, blurring distinctions between the two media and reinforcing the harmony between surface and structure.

In Little Hard Clouds Becoming Vessels, the sculptures engage in dialogue with a group of charcoal drawings on paper. The graphic production, although often preparatory, always joined his creative path, eventually becoming his main expressive language in later years as his eyesight deteriorated, leading him to abandon ceramics and continue creating by drawing. The drawings are distinguished by abstract creations composed of pencil lines, material gestures and shades made with fingertips. Brief verbal notes accompany most drawings like marginal annotations to the visual composition.

The charcoal drawings reveal a close connection between the artist and contemporary music: word, action and musical rhythm enter perfect harmony; the rhythmic graphite gesture creates a visual musicality made of signs and words that follow each other like improvised scores. His final phase of research echoes the silent melodies of John Cage (as in the celebrated piece 4’33’’), and the minimalism of Philip Glass and Terry Riley was a major source of inspiration.

Not a Sound (2017) shows this contrast: the silence suggested by the words coexists with a rhythmic and almost musical gesturality. Again, in Counting One Two Three (2016), the act of counting introduces a temporal sequence similar to rhythm, and the fingerprints, though they may seem casual, reveal a musical structure.

With the loss of one of the most important senses for an artist, sound and gesture became in his final years the privileged expressive channels, allowing suspension and silence to become active spaces of emotional and conceptual resonance, places in which meaning settles and amplifies.

Alessandra Lami is an independent art historian based in Milan, Italy, with a specialisation in contemporary art. Holding a degree in History and Criticism of Art from Università degli Studi di Milano (2024), her research centres on current artistic practices and the critical frameworks that inform today’s visual culture.

Gordon Baldwin: Little hard clouds becoming vessels was on view at Officine Saffi, Milan, between October 3 and December 3, 2025.

Subscribe to Ceramics Now to read similar articles, essays, reviews and critical reflections on contemporary ceramics. Subscriptions enable us to feature a wider range of voices, perspectives, and expertise within the ceramics community.

Captions

• Gordon Baldwin. Little hard clouds becoming vessels, installation view at Fondazione Officine Saffi. Courtesy Fondazione Officine Saffi. Photo: Alessandra Vinci

Ceramics Now celebrates 15 Years with a Special Anniversary Edition

We are delighted to announce the release of our 15-Year Anniversary Edition, celebrating fifteen years of Ceramics Now through a special, artist-driven issue spanning 150 pages. Shaped by an open call that received over 950 applications, this edition brings together 24 selected artists whose practices reflect the diversity, urgency, and imagination of ceramics today.

Featured artists: Amber Rane Sibley, Renata Cassiano Alvarez, Andile Dyalvane, Linda Nguyen Lopez, Jovan Matić, Erin Berry, Tim Fluck, Céline Arnould, Heidi Bjørgan, Ahrong Kim, Yinchen Li, Toni De Jesus, Chiao-Chih Lu, Mark Goudy, Andréa Keys Connell, Yuka Nishihisamatsu, Théo Ouaki, Nick Ervinck, Tümay Erman, Ariana Heinzman, Barbara Léon Leclercq, Yaerin Pyun, Ana Buitrago, Renqian Yang. On the cover: Jovan Matić.

The selection brings together figurative and abstract sculpture, experimental vessels, glaze-driven work, digital and hand-built processes, and pieces that respond to the body, home, memory, identity, and everyday life. Across different cultural and personal contexts, the works show clay as something physical and direct, but also emotional, playful, fragile, and strong.

Alongside established artists, this edition introduces emerging voices that appear in Ceramics Now for the first time, reflecting what the publication has always stood for: discovery, openness, and the importance of giving space to new work and new perspectives.

This anniversary edition offers a snapshot of a field that remains restless, generous, and continually redefined by those who work within it. It marks fifteen years of Ceramics Now by bringing together artists whose work points toward what ceramics can still become, shaped by those who continue to test the limits of the material and find new ways to speak through clay.

We would like to thank everyone who applied to our open call for this special edition. We’re grateful every day to work in this field and to meet people who understand the value of clay. Here’s to many more years together!

The 15-Year Anniversary Edition of Ceramics Now is now available for purchase on our website. To celebrate, we’re also offering $15 off an annual Ceramics Now subscription throughout December (use the promo code 15YEARS).

Get your copy of Ceramics Now Magazine – 15-Year Anniversary Edition:

Order the hard-copy (print) edition, $39
Order the digital edition, $5
Subscribe: Annual ($59), Monthly ($6), Patron ($100)

Fernando Casasempere: Ruins is on view at Fred Levine, Bruton

November 15, 2025 – January 10, 2026

Fred Levine is excited to present Ruins, a solo exhibition with London based, Chilean artist, Fernando Casasempere. The exhibition brings together new ceramic sculptures and paintings that continue Casasempere’s long-standing exploration of time, decay, and humanity’s imprint on the natural and built environment in particular Ruins and their architectural fragments.

In Ruins, Casasempere examines the architectural fragment as both a physical and psychological relic, a trace of what once was and a catalyst for imagination. His sculptural works evoke remnants of ancient structures, using a technique that builds his sculpture from blocks or bricks that reference the continuity of human construction and the erosion of civilization over time. Alongside these, a series of Salares paintings investigates the marks, or scars that nature leaves through its own processes of transformation and regeneration.

Casasempere describes his enduring fascination with ruins as something that exists “in my own collective unconscious.” From early encounters with the monumental cities and temples of his youth, it was not the perfection of architecture that endured in his memory, but the incompleteness of what remained and abandoned fragments are what inspire him to reconstruct personal histories of place and time.

Through this exhibition, Casasempere brings these impressions into physical form, working within ceramics’ full expressive potential, from raw material to refined structure, from permanence to fragility. His practice invites reflection on what persists and what fades, and how human and natural forces intertwine to shape the landscapes we inhabit.

About Fernando Casasempere
Casasempere has exhibited extensively in the UK, Chile, North America, Japan and Europe and is renowned for monumental installations including the critically acclaimed Out of Sync at Somerset House, London (2012) – which inspired Paul Cummins’s and Tom Piper’s WWI commemorative centenary installation Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red at Tower of London (2014) – and Back to the Earth at New Art Centre, Salisbury (2005). Forthcoming commissions (2021) include permanent works near London’s Tottenham Court Road Station (Derwent) and at Henrietta House (CBRE).

Forthcoming and selected solo exhibitions include: New Art Centre, Reino Unido (2024); Francis Gallery, Los Ángeles (2024); Galería Artespacio, Chile (2024) Galería Helene Aziza, París (2024). Bloomberg Space, London ( 2022 )the San Diego Museum of Art (2022), Casa América, Madrid (2020), Ivorypress Gallery, Madrid (2019), Parafin Gallery, London (2018), Tomio Koyama Gallery, Tokyo (2017), Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Santiago de Chile (2016), Parafin, London (2015), Somerset House, London (2012), and Museo de Arte Contemporaneo, Santiago de Chile (2012).

Selected group exhibitions include: Museum of Royal Worcester, Worcester (2018), Frieze Sculpture Park, London (2016), Sculpture in the City, London (2016), Sotheby’s Beyond Limits Exhibitions, London (2008), New Art Centre, Salisbury (2008), Jerwood Foundation, Alcester (2007). Selected collections include: Victoria & Albert Museum, London; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Harvard Museum, Cambridge; Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam; Contemporary Art Museum, Osaka; International Museum of Ceramics, Faenza; San Diego Museum of Art.

Fernando Casasempere was born in Santiago de Chile in 1958 and trained at Scola Forma and Escuela de Arte y Oficios, Barcelona. He moved to London in 1997, where he currently lives and works.

About Fred Levine
Fred Levine is a contemporary art gallery based in Bruton, Somerset in the UK. The gallery was founded in 2019 under its former name Informality in Oxfordshire and had occupied a permanent premise until 2022, further extending its programme in London at Cromwell Place until 2024. Fred Levine hosts a diverse exhibition programme both nationally and internationally and has exhibited works by some of the most celebrated contemporary artists including, Kapwani Kiwanga, Martine Poppe, Hannah Brown, Fernando Casasempere and Francesca Mollett.

Contact
info@fredlevine.co.uk

Fred Levine
The Old Silk Barn, Quaperlake Street
Bruton, BA10 0HB
United Kingdom

Photos courtesy of Fred Levine. © Fernando Casasempere. Photography by Tom Mannion

The Ceramic Studio announced its 2026 Guest Potter Workshops

The Ceramic Studio is thrilled to announce its new line-up of Guest Potter Workshops — an extraordinary chance to learn from some of the most innovative ceramic artists working today. Whether you’re a complete beginner or a seasoned potter, there’s something for everyone.

Each workshop is guided by a guest tutor — a professional potter or ceramicist — bringing a unique style, fresh techniques and years of experience. From wheel-throwing masterclasses and porcelain hand-building, to decorative techniques, slipware, surface textures and sculptural work — there’s a rich variety of courses designed to expand your skills and creative vision.

Classes are held in a beautiful studio set in a converted barn near Tunbridge Wells, just an hour’s drive from London. With light, spacious studios and small-group teaching, you’ll get plenty of individual attention and a supportive, friendly atmosphere.

Discover the workshops →

What you can expect
• Focused, high-quality teaching — from throwing on the wheel to delicate porcelain hand-building, slab-construction, glazing, surface texture, and slipware.
• Creative variety — each workshop explores different methods and aesthetics, so whether you want to refine traditional pottery techniques, experiment with bold surface design, or explore sculptural pieces, there’s plenty on offer.
• Community and inspiration — working alongside like-minded creatives, you’ll be part of a vibrant pottery community that encourages collaboration, feedback, and mutual support.

Who it’s for
The Ceramic Studio’s Guest Potter Workshops are inclusive — open to anyone from curious beginners to experienced makers wanting to push their craft further. Some workshops suit those new to clay, while others offer advanced challenges for seasoned potters. Please check the course descriptions for each workshop’s recommended skill level.

Explore the full 2026 workshop line-up:

• Craig Underhill — Slab Building & Surface Mark Making (11–14 May)
Craig’s workshop is all about structure and texture. Learn reliable slab-building techniques, construct three-dimensional forms and explore mark-making methods that transform flat surfaces into tactile, expressive pieces.

• Andri Maimaridou — Kintsugi (31 May)
Celebrate the art of repair. Andri introduces the modern approach to Kintsugi, where cracks and breaks are honoured and visually transformed using lacquer and metallic highlights.

• Louise Bell — Playful Animals (6–7 June)
This two-day workshop invites playful exploration through hand-built animal sculptures. Learn creative construction techniques, plus finishing methods using tissue transfers and slips for characterful decoration.

• Dee Barnes — Decorated Treasure Boxes (13–14 June)
Dee’s course focuses on functional beauty. You’ll slab-build keepsake boxes and explore colourful slip decoration to create practical yet decorative pieces.

• Sophie Aguilera Lester — Flower Making in Porcelain (20–21 June)
Delicate, refined, and meditative—Sophie’s workshop walks you through hand building porcelain flowers with an emphasis on precision and finesse.

• Emily Stubbs — Patterns, Prints & Pots (27–28 June)
Emily’s focus is surface. Create patterned and textured slabs, then use those surfaces to build one-off vessels with personality and depth.

• Amanda-Sue Rope — Collage with Clay: Combining Thrown & Hand-Built Elements (29 June – 3 July)
This five-day workshop combines thrown forms with hand-built elements to create innovative lidded vessels and bottle forms—part function, part sculpture.

• Justine Allison — Hand Building with Porcelain (4–5 July)
Justine’s course is for those wanting to master delicate porcelain hand building. Learn techniques that make fine, fragile forms that sing with subtlety.

• Matthew Blakely — An Exploration of Glazing (6–10 July)
Matthew’s intensive explores glaze theory and application, encouraging experimentation with colour, layering and surface behaviour. Expect practical demonstrations and tests to demystify glaze chemistry.

• Paul Smith — Hand Building Animals (11–12 July)
Paul offers another sculptural weekend focused on animal forms—techniques, structure and expressive detail are all on the menu.

• Harriet Caslin — Casting & Carving Slip Cast Porcelain (13–15 July)
This course teaches slip casting, carving and finishing to create sculptural and semi-functional porcelain pieces that play with pattern, texture and colour.

• Richard Phethean — Throwing & Altering (20–24 July)
Richard’s longer course concentrates on throwing, altering and handling larger weights—building confidence for more ambitious work and improving form control.

• Kwak Kyungtae — Wheel Throwing Masterclass (26–30 Aug) & Onggi Demo / Masterclass (31 Aug & 2–6 Sept)
Kwak brings deep traditional knowledge: a five-day masterclass in Korean wheel-throwing alongside a demonstration and an Onggi masterclass focusing on traditional large-jar techniques.

• Brian Dickenson — Improve Your Throwing Masterclass (7–18 Sept)
An intensive two-week course aimed at repetition and refinement—Brian’s class is designed to dramatically improve technique through focused practice.

• Francis Lloyd-Jones — Learn to Throw (28 Sept – 2 Oct)
A beginner-friendly throwing course that covers the fundamentals: cylinders, bowls and the core stages of making.

• James Ort — Ceramic Animals (12–14 Oct & 9–10 Nov)
Sculptural, expressive animal work with unique modelling approaches to produce standing and wall-mounted animal forms.

• Alice Mara — Hand Building Houses (15–16 Oct & 12–13 Nov)
Build slab-constructed houses using photographic transfers and careful detailing—this course is part architecture, part memory-box.

• Russell Kingston — Slip Decorated Earthenware (19–23 Oct)
Combine throwing with traditional country pottery and slip decoration to make rustic, decorated earthenware pieces.

• Adam Frew — Throwing with Porcelain (2–6 Nov)
Focus on throwing porcelain and Matthew-style glazing techniques: crisp lines, brushwork and surface contrasts.

• Kate Semple — Between Paper and Clay (16–19 Nov)
Explore the relationship between paper and clay—forms, textures and how the two mediums inform each other.

• Tom Knowles-Jackson — Throwing Statement Kitchenware (23–27 Nov)
A five-day workshop focused on repetition and fluency in making kitchenware that celebrates form and function.

Why join a Guest Potter Workshop?
Learn from recognised makers. Work in small groups for hands-on tuition. Try a wide range of techniques—from slab-building and slip casting to traditional wheel-throwing, glazing and sculptural practice. Above all, meet a community of makers who will challenge and inspire you.

The Ceramic Studio’s workshops take place in Brenchley, Kent, an English countryside location easily reached from London and major transport links.

Spaces are limited; a 20% deposit secures your place. If a particular course sparks you, book early to avoid disappointment.

Discover the full schedule and book your place today.

“Tremore Essenziale” at the Alfonso Artiaco Gallery in Naples represents the Belgian artist’s return to Italy after his masterful exhibition at the Villa Medici in Rome in 2020-21. A more intimate and personal vision is created at the Neapolitan gallery as opposed to the Villa Medici show that provided a retrospective of Creten’s sculptural production from the 1980s onwards. Whereas Villa Medici’s “Peccati” was conceived by the artist as a gift to the eternal city, this show is a homage to Naples, the city of tremors par excellence.

A poem written by the artist serves as a billet-doux to Naples, overshadowed by the silhouette of Vesuvius, whose historic eruptions are so often paired with earthquakes, starting with the tremors that preceded the most famous eruption of the volcano in 79 AD. Creten relates these tremors to the fragility of clay and the creative process, but also to the fear that comes from confronting taboos.

Known as the ‘gypsy ceramicist’ for his itinerant practice spanning almost 40 years, Creten recently settled in Paris at “La Solfatara”, the studio he shares with the visual artist Jean-Michel Othoniel. The choice of the name is telling. One of more than 40 volcanoes in the Campi Flegrei to the north of Naples, the Solfatura was identified by Strabo in the Roman early imperial age as the entrance into the underworld and home to the god Vulcan, the master craftsman. Creten explains: “The Solfatara was a place where people undertaking the Grand Tour went to write their poems, and it was an environment where one could see the future, through a connection with the underworld and the unknown.” (source). If the Solfatara was an obligatory site on the 18th-century Grand Tour, the designation also suggests the personal Grand Tour of the artists, residents at the French Academy in Rome in 1996. Moreover, Vulcan is evoked by the previous life of the building as a metalworks.

The viewer enters into contact with Cretan’s work already from the courtyard of the palazzo. Two gold bars, “Specchi dorati” (Golden mirrors), framed cross-like in the central window of the gallery already entice the visitor with their luscious surface treatment to enter into Creten’s constructed world. Like much of the work presented in the gallery, the mirrors are the latest incarnation of a well-loved imaginario of the artist. First presented in the Meyer Gallery in NYC in 1988 and included in the Villa Medici show in a more expected silver version, here the reflective surface of the gold-lustred pieces takes on a spiritual significance. Other “mirrors” positioned around the gallery serve to reflect the viewers as well as the works.

As a self-taught ceramist, Creten is resistant to the traditional constraints of ceramics, which he sees as too restrictive. He moves with ease between extremes: the minimalism of the “mirrors” and the baroque extravagance of the majority of the works on display. This juxtaposition is nowhere more apparent than in a comparison of the “Mirrors” with the “Gloria” series. Shield-like concave ovals, titled respectively “La Gloria – E avanti a lui tremava tutta Roma (and before him all of Rome trembled)”, citing Tosca, and “La Gloria Subliminale (Subliminal Glory)”, reflect the divine and also light, in this case, facetted by the elaborate surface treatment composed of multiple modules that portray the rhythmic pulsations of natural genesis.

Conceived as the central focus of the show are free-standing and wall pieces from the series “Odore di Femmina” that has been a recurrent theme since Creten’s residency at the Villa Medici in the 90’s. Words are important to Creten, as evidenced by this title, which refers to both Mozart’s “Don Giovanni” and Dino Risi’s film “Profumo di Donna”. It is here that Creten is at his most expressive. The precision of construction of the voluptuous folds of the flowers is enveloped as if in a caress by the lusciousness and sensuality of the glazes. In the poem composed as an integral part of the show, Creten writes:

I tremble, and it feels as though the building, the ground, and the entire earth tremble along with me. When I first began shaping delicate, fragile clay into flowers, my hands were already shaking.

The emotion, the dizziness of taboo – transforming a material so dirty, damp, yet so fertile and full of possibility into those seemingly untouchable, fragile flowers – led me to this series: Odore di Femmina.

One rose painting, subtitled “Il germe della libertà” (the seed of freedom) is transitional between the pure gold of the “Mirrors” and the “Gloria” series. Here the lustred surface is shattered through the intrusion of an opulent circular section that vibrates in hues of yellow and pink. In the other two bas-reliefs on display, the lustre becomes a minimalistic subtext to the black surface in “Vulva – Continente Nero – La Stupenda” (Vulva – Black Continent – the Studenous), whereas it is more eloquent in the figure-eight form of “La Ferita” (The Wound), articulating the berry-like elements and escaping in a broad swath on the left.

The two free-standing figures, posed on bases glazed in primary colours, occupy the centre of the gallery. Composed like the rose paintings of multiples of flowers, they cite the fragmentary naked Venuses of Classical antiquity, torsos that are headless, armless and legless. In these works, difficult themes such as sexuality, the other and race are rendered more digestible by clothing them in pure beauty. One, “La Luminosa – La Solfatara” (the luminous – the Solfatara” is bright yellow, perhaps a reference to the sulphuric gases emitted by the volcano. Intrusions of other colours on the back of this figure are a poetic expression of the interior, hidden from the first glance of the viewer. Here gold lustre appears anew flanked by the rose glaze already in the rose painting, subtitled “Il germe della libertà” (the seed of freedom). In the turquoise torso titled “These are the springs”, bright primary red of the base is echoed in the yellow and red of the swath of colour that extends from the shoulder.

Social injustice is the focus of the series of “Perla Nera”, is which a disembodied head nestled between the two halves of a shell, is both revealed and concealed. As in Creten’s poem, it represents “an existential crossing, filled with fear and hope”. The three heads are distinguished by variations in the visibility of the head and the surface treatments.

Some works of Creten, in their universality, can take on new significance in each exhibition. Whereas the series “Points of Observation” in the Villa Medici serve as the bearers of the names of the 7 mortal sins of the show’s title “Peccati”, here they take on a maritime significance. Incised with lines that recall the latitudes and longitudes of navigational maps, they encourage the visitor to “anchor” themselves as if tied to a boat pier and to contemplate the various elements of this exhibition.

Creten’s show at the Alfonafo Artiaco Gallery is a vision in gold and vibrant colour, reflecting our world and encouraging the viewer’s reflection on crucial issues.

Lori-Ann Touchette is the co-founder of C.R.E.T.A. Rome, an international center for ceramics and the arts in Rome, Italy. An American art historian with degrees from Brown, Princeton, and Oxford Universities, she has taught and worked in the administration of several British and American study-abroad programs since moving to Rome in 1997. She is the author or editor of several articles and books on Greek and Roman art, as well as the 18th-century Grand Tour. Touchette has also contributed numerous articles on historical and contemporary ceramics to Ceramics: Art & Perception and other international ceramics magazines, and has written critical texts for international exhibitions.

Johan Creten: Tremore Essenziale was on view at Alfonso Artiaco, Naples, between September 11 and October 31, 2025.

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Captions

• Featured image: External view, Johan Creten, Tremore Essenziale, 2025, Alfonso Artiaco, Napoli. Courtesy Alfonso Artiaco. Photo: Grafiluce
• Exhibition view, Johan Creten, Tremore Essenziale, 2025, Alfonso Artiaco, Napoli. Courtesy Alfonso Artiaco. Photo: Grafiluce
• Exhibition view, Johan Creten: Tremore Essenziale, 2025, Alfonso Artiaco, Napoli. Courtesy Alfonso Artiaco. Photo: Grafiluce
• Johan Creten, Specchio dorato #3 #4, 2022-2023, gold luster on glazed stoneware, 40.5 x 107 x 9 cm. Courtesy Alfonso Artiaco. Photo: Grafiluce
• Johan Creten, La Gloria Subliminale. Courtesy Alfonso Artiaco. Photo: Grafiluce
• Johan Creten, Odore di Femmina – Il germe della libertà, 2025, gold lustre on glazed stoneware, 81 x 61 x 19 cm. Courtesy Alfonso Artiaco. Photo: Grafiluce
• Johan Creten, Odore di Femmina – Vulva – Continente Nero – La Stupenda. Photo by Lori-Ann Touchette
• Johan Creten, Odore di Femmina – La Ferita. Courtesy Alfonso Artiaco. Photo: Grafiluce
• Johan Creten, Tremore Essenziale exhibition view with 3 “Odore di Femmina”. Courtesy Alfonso Artiaco. Photo: Grafiluce
• Johan Creten, Odore di Femmina – La Luminosa – Solfatara, 2025, gold lustre on glazed stoneware, 72 x 40 x 30 cm, base 38,5 x ø 80 cm. Courtesy Alfonso Artiaco. Photo: Grafiluce
• Johan Creten, Perla Nera – Mare Profondo. Courtesy Alfonso Artiaco. Photo: Grafiluce
• Exhibition view with “Odore di femmina” torsos. Johan Creten, Tremore Essenziale, 2025. Courtesy Alfonso Artiaco. Photo: Grafiluce

Pioneers of Studio Ceramics: Modern Masterpieces at Woolley & Wallis

As the year draws to its close, Woolley & Wallis presents its bi-annual British Art Pottery auction in Salisbury, with selected highlights on view in its Mayfair Galleries, London. Long regarded as one of the UK’s leading auction houses for decorative arts, Woolley & Wallis presents a curated selection of works that trace the evolution of British ceramics from the Victorian era through to the modern studio movement.

With over 350 lots to be sold on 10th December, Woolley and Wallis are proud to present modern masters of their craft, celebrating the collectors and collections their pieces are woven through.

The Studio Ceramics section opens with significant works by early pioneers of the movement – Bernard Leach (1887-1979) and Janet Leach (1918-1997) of the St Ives pottery, presented alongside a selection of works by Katharine Pleydell-Bouverie (1895-1985). Recalling to mind the historic early Staffordshire slipware of Thomas and Ralph Toft, Leach’s early Hare dish, c.1924, is a charming and evocative work depicting that most English of symbols: the hare at full stride. A similar piece may be seen on page 76 of the exhibition catalogue for the Bernard Leach: 125th Anniversary presentation at the Asahi Shinbun, Tokyo, 29 August – 11 November 2012. Also present in the sale are a pair of Leaping Deer dishes, another of Leach’s favoured motifs – though with a rich green ash glaze rather than the lustre type of the former work.

View Catalogue | British Art Pottery →

Such ash glazes were, famously, the experimental focus of Pleydell-Bouverie, whose output is also well represented in the sale with a selection of fine pieces. From her wood-fired kiln at Coleshill, the 17th century family estate, Pleydell-Bouverie made use of sieved ash derived from the remarkable variety of woods, hedgerows and vegetable gardens of the estate, making detailed experiments and records of the glazes created by different compositions of ashes.

Several of the pieces in the upcoming sale exemplify her masterful control over these natural glazes, as well as the nuanced and delicate fluted and flared forms that they envelop.

While the partnership between Leach and Pleydell-Bouverie is well celebrated – the latter potter being taken in under the wing of Leach after a series of evening classes – perhaps an even more significant relationship is that of the most famous émigré potters of the 20th century: Hans Coper (1920-1981) and Lucie Rie (1902-1995). Coper joined Rie’s studio in 1946 as an assistant, having never before worked in clay. The domestic simplicity of Rie’s output contrasts with Coper’s sculptural, abstract forms, and Woolley & Wallis is proud to present a number of fine pieces by both potters. Of particular note is a rare vessel – cup on foot with central disc, circa 1965 – which is provenanced to the estate of Jane Coper (1932-2002), Hans’ lifelong sweetheart and a talented artist in her own right.

The variety of ceramics offered in the sale is demonstrated further by a selection of sculptural works by noted potters, including Ewen Henderson (1934-2000) and Gordon Baldwin (1932-2025), as well as a small group of colourful and attractive works by Emmanuel Cooper (1938-2012). A stoneware jug enveloped in a bright yellow glaze with gold spots is of particular interest, being the first piece presented at the Ruthin Craft Centre, Emmanuel Cooper OBE 1938-2012, A Retrospective Exhibition, held 7 December 2013 – 2 February 2014.

Contemporary ceramics are well represented by striking works from such artists as Ashraf Hanna (b.1967), Akiko Hirai (b.1970), Bodil Manz (b.1943) and Edmund de Waal (b.1964). Hirai’s extraordinary Extra Large Moon Jar, c.2000, is a museum-quality piece of grogged stoneware, presenting large rugged porcelain deposits over white and black slips under running pale blue and green glazes. The moon jar was presented at the Flow Gallery, Akiko Hirai Solo Show, 25 June – 15 September 2020, and it stands as a remarkable testament to Hirai’s vision, imagination and experimental daring. On a different scale, the delicate celadon crackle-glazed pinched and thumbed vessels for which De Waal is renowned are well represented, and appear at a timely moment – with the opening at The Hepworth Wakefield of Playing with Fire: Edmund de Waal and Axel Salto, a new exhibition which sees De Waal offering an interpretation of Salto’s artistic influence.

Woolley & Wallis has a long history of curating single-owner collections and estates, and prides itself on having achieved very strong prices for such. This auction features the ongoing sale of the estate of the highly regarded craftsman Richard Batterham (1936-2021), which features numerous exhibition pieces for the V&A and the Craft Council.

About Woolley & Wallis
Woolley & Wallis, based in Salisbury and Mayfair, is one of the UK’s leading regional auction houses. The 20th Century Design department has achieved world record prices in its field and is well regarded for its finely curated sales, which aim to showcase rare and exceptional pieces for the dedicated collector. The department has achieved very strong prices for private collections and fine single objects alike, notably including the sale in 2023 of a Wiener Werkstätte silver and malachite tray, designed by Josef Hoffmann for Palais Stoclet Brussels, for £230,000. Client enquiries may be directed towards Max Fisher, Head of Design: mf@woolleys.live, +44 (0)1722 424505

Martin Woll Godal: Sequence is on view at Bomuldsfabriken Kunsthall, Arendal

October 11 – December 30, 2025

In each gallery room, large ceramic installations by Martin Woll Godal are presented, breaking with and challenging the material’s unique qualities, history, possibilities, and limitations.

Sequence is carefully composed by the artist, with each room inviting an unavoidable physical encounter. What is a space—mentally and physically? How do we navigate and interpret a room or a landscape where given perspectives shift? What happens to us when we stand beneath a porcelain sky or pass by a corridor of ceilings we would normally walk under?

Throughout his practice, Martin Woll Godal has consistently explored the materiality of clay and ceramics. He works empathetically with craft, art, and architecture as a whole—across both large and small formats.

The spatial memory of clay

Essay by Peder Valle, art historian

Scientists who study human memory explain it by saying that our sensory impressions are stored, retrieved and recognised, before being stored again – usually in a slightly modified version. A memory changes a little each time it is recalled. When we struggle to think of something, it is due to a lack of correspondence with stored memories. In the same way, the eureka moment we experience when the answer reveals itself is a sign that we actually recognise something we feel we have forgotten; we have basically “remembered” it all along.

Martin Woll Godal’s ceramics evoke the same recognition. Not only because they are reminiscent of shapes and constructions we have seen before, and which are part of our personal or collective memory. On the contrary, it is as if the clay itself remembers, evoking, imitating, and recalling images, figures, and installations that we recognise.

Ceiling

This is the case with the first artwork we encounter, Ceiling. One hundred and fifty hand-beaten porcelain tiles are mounted hanging from the ceiling, on steel wire, with porcelain fixing plugs. The soft, slightly wavy shape testifies to the work of the hand and the inherent imprecision of craftsmanship. The installation, as a whole, however, evokes associations with the ubiquitous ceiling tiles found in public spaces and offices; featureless architectural elements that anonymously form the framework for our routine daily lives. And at the same time, the shiny, glazed surface makes us recognise the Ceiling as porcelain; something handmade, shiny and alive within the framework of the predictable.

Front

Martin Woll Godal’s ceramics assume architectural proportions. Not only in handmade ceilings, but also in height, as with the column of turned terracotta rings that he made for the Norwegian Association of Craft Artists’ Annual Exhibition in 2015. Now the rings are back, and more daring than before: In the work Front, they balance on edge, forming a high wall between the room’s two columns. At the same time, the open centre of the rings forms an airy and finely meshed construction: Almost like lace, the spaces become defining, emphasising the unbearable lightness of the ceramic wall. Closed, but still open.

Passage

Architecture is, like ceramics, a non-renewable resource. Architecture in the sense that what is demolished can never come back, just as ceramics can never return to its original state as clay. Many ceramics have also ended up on the scrap heap of history as discarded building material; old bricks and roof tiles with no future prospects, and no prospect of being reused.

Martin has done something about this. In the work Passasje, the old, single-curved roof tiles from his own workshop play a leading role, having previously served on the roof of an old house in Arendal, before being reused on the main house where Martin lives, and finally on the workshop building. To this cycle, the artist has added another chapter: Next to the stack of old roof tiles is a stack of roof tiles that are cast after one of them, one with damage, and made with reused stoneware clay. In this way, the ceramics imitate their own history, form, use, and material, creating a passage from what has been to what is.

Cavity/Beaker

The cavity defines the plasticity, load-bearing capacity and form of ceramics. That is why the turned clay vessel contains an immortal ceramic truth, about structure and volume, about technique and materiality. In the work of the same name, the cavities are black-glazed, cocoon-shaped and assembled. As a visual reminder of the clay’s earthly origins, the vessels appear self-grown, organic, almost plant-like.

The ultimate hollow space, however, is the drinking vessel. The cup, the goblet – the ceramicist’s basic form and inevitable cliché, which is characterised by its boundlessly mundane task: to hold liquid. Martin Woll Godal devotes an entire room to this ceramic archetype, where three different sizes run all the way around the room – like the notes of a piece of music with a fixed rhythm and a recurring theme.

Structure III/Metropolis

The rhythm also characterises the work Structure III, where row after row of squares are formed from extruded square tubes. Here, the ceramics are industrial, regular, and metallic, while the handmade is limited to the memory of the malleability that lies in the clay’s essence. In more than 70 repetitions, the clay continues to insist on the sovereignty of ceramics as a material: Malleable, but still hard; light, but still firm. In the last room, the elements are united in a sculptural tribute to sculptor Arne Vinje Gunnerud’s Metropolis on Nygårdshøyden in Bergen, a miniature cityscape featuring slender skyscrapers that reach towards the sky.

Clay remembers where we have been before and where we come from. In Martin Woll Godal’s Forløp, we are confronted with new and old truths, and build a new understanding of the potential of ceramics. For in the space between construction and reproduction lies the potential – but also the memory.

About Martin Woll Godal
Martin Woll Godal (b. 1982, Bærum; raised in Trysil) lives and works in Arendal. He was educated at the Bergen Academy of Art and Design and has held several solo exhibitions as well as participated in national and international group shows. These include Uppsala Art Museum, CLAY Museum of Ceramic Art Denmark, Archangelsk Artist Union Gallery in Russia, and the Peder Balke Center. Woll Godal’s work is represented in the collections of the National Museum, Kunstsilo, Uppsala Art Museum, and KODE.

Contact
post@bomuldsfabriken.no

Bomuldsfabriken Kunsthall
Oddenveien 5
4847 Arendal
Norway

Photo credit: Tor Simen Ulstein, Kunstdok/Bomuldsfabriken

Jim Melchert: Where the Boundaries Are is on view at di Rosa Center for Contemporary Art, San Francisco

October 18, 2025 – January 3, 2026

di Rosa Center for Contemporary Art is pleased to announce the first major retrospective by the seminal Bay Area artist Jim Melchert. Melchert is often described as the “great philosopher of the post-war craft movement,” and the exhibition will celebrate and explore the legacy of one of America’s great artists, who challenged ceramic tradition of expression, form, and function and helped elevate the medium’s acceptance into mainstream contemporary sculpture. Curated by Griff Williams, founder of Gallery 16 and a close friend of Melchert’s, the exhibition will delve into his storied career, bringing together more than 60 works that span six decades for the first time, including several works that haven’t been publicly exhibited before.

Melchert was a central figure in a community of California artists in the 1960s who elevated the field of ceramics to a contemporary artform. He became a landmark figure in American art along with friends Pete Voulkos, Robert Arneson, Ruth Asawa, Bruce Conner, Roy De Forest, and Bruce Nauman. Through the works on view, the exhibition will explore Melchert’s work with Voulkos, Ken Price, Viola Frey and Nagle in the 1960s, and will document the artist’s involvement in the California Funk movement, his groundbreaking 1970s performances, his conceptual art, and showcases the thrilling broken tile works that preoccupied the artist at the end of his career.

“Melchert’s artwork was the embodiment of his kind and inquisitive spirit,” said curator Griff Williams. “We see in his late tile work a metaphor for life. What lies behind these broken shards in Melchert’s mesmerizing works is something remarkable: Optimism. Nothing is beyond repair. These works are born from the belief that we have the power to bring positive change from our misfortune. By embracing the imperfect, he was celebrating our resilience, diversity, and human strength.”

Melchert had a long and deeply influential career, and di Rosa is a natural fit to celebrate his work and legacy. Founder Rene di Rosa was an early collector and longtime friend of Melchert. Among the works in the exhibition will be a large-scale photograph of Melchert’s seminal 1965 work “Earth Door,” a land-art work commissioned by di Rosa. To create the work, which is still on view at di Rosa’s Napa property, Melchert dug a mold into the land that echoed the pattern of plowed vineyards. He then poured concrete and eventually stood the casting upright, a monument to the land and the place.

“di Rosa was central to Melchert’s life and career,” said Kate Eilertsen, Executive Director and Chief Curator at di Rosa. “Over decades spent there in fellowship with other artists, it became a place that nurtured and expanded his multi-faceted, genre-bending practice. We are proud to present this overdue retrospective of a towering figure in the history of Northern California art.”

Melchert was noted for his openness to experimentation and his encouragement of that in others. While championing the new with particular emphasis on conceptualism and clay, he also set standards of integrity and grace among artists. A philosophical concept underscores Melchert’s artwork, proposing that when something is broken, it can be repaired and made stronger and more beautiful. We see in Melchert’s tile work a metaphor for life. What lies behind these broken shards in Melchert’s mesmerizing works is something remarkable: optimism. Nothing is beyond repair. These works are born from the belief that we have the power to bring positive change from our misfortune and contribute to the depth of our shared story.

The first-ever monograph on Melchert, Jim Melchert: Where The Boundaries Are (find the book on Amazon / Bookshop.org), written by Griff Williams, will accompany the exhibition. The book is 256 pages of color illustrations with essays by artists and curatorial luminaries capture the artist’s work in every stage of his illustrious career illuminating his performance art and his celebrated ceramic works. The monograph includes essays by Tanya Zimbardo, Sequoia Miller, Renny Pritikin, and Maria Porges.

About Jim Melchert
Jim Melchert (1930-2023) was born in New Bremen, OH and died in Oakland, CA. He received degrees from Princeton and the University of California, Berkeley, where he studied ceramic with Voulkos. He taught at the San Francisco Art Institute and then at UC Berkeley. He was director of the Visual Arts Program of the National Endowment for the Arts from 1977 until 1981 and in doing so, he created the Peer Review system used in nearly every field today. He is widely regarded as one of the most fierce defenders of artistic freedoms. He was also Director of the American Academy in Rome from 1984 until 1988.

His work has been exhibited extensively throughout the world and s included in such prestigious collections and Victoria and Albert Museum, London; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto; World Ceramic Center; Icheon, Korea; Museum of Art & Design, New York; Renwick Gallery; Smithsonian Institution; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the di Rosa, Napa; and Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven.

About di Rosa Center for Contemporary Art
di Rosa is a non-profit art center and nature preserve specializing in the art of Northern California. Located at 5200 Sonoma Highway, di Rosa includes a permanent collection comprised of more than 1600 works housed in a large art gallery and outdoor Sculpture Meadow. Visitors can enjoy the integration of art and nature, as di Rosa is also home to a beautiful lake, walking trails with vineyard views, and picnic grounds. di Rosa presents contemporary exhibitions by Bay Area-based artists and maintains a permanent collection of notable works by artists with ties to the Bay Area from the mid-twentieth century to the early 2000s. di Rosa offers an array of public programs and events for all ages to inspire creativity and curiosity.

Contact
visit@dirosaart.org

di Rosa Center for Contemporary Art
1150 25th Street
San Francisco, CA 94107
United States

Installation views courtesy di Rosa Center for Contemporary Art

Posted on November 24, 2025

The Department of Art, Design and Visual Studies at Boise State University invites applications for a Teaching Assistant Professor of Art position in Ceramics. This is a full-time, nine-month academic appointment starting Fall 2026.

Position Overview:
The successful candidate will teach four courses per semester at all levels within the Ceramics program, with the possibility of teaching other courses in the Department of Art, Design, & Visual Studies. In addition to an active professional practice, the successful candidate will have a demonstrated commitment to fostering a dynamic, collaborative, and creative learning environment. Additionally, the ability to engage students in both traditional and emerging ceramic methods will be essential.

Key Responsibilities:
• Teach 4 courses per semester at all levels of undergraduate ceramics
• Manage the Ceramics Lab Technician and student-workers
• Foster a positive learning environment that emphasizes both technical skill and artistic creativity
• Participate in departmental service and shared governance

About the Ceramics Program:
The Ceramics program at Boise State offers students the opportunity to comprehensively explore various ceramics methods, practices and art concepts within the context of contemporary ceramic practice. Beginning classes emphasize the development of technical skills, art making strategies and knowledge of ceramics history. Intermediate classes provide further immersion in the above and also focus on the development of methodologies for realizing a self-directed and rigorous work practice. Advanced study in ceramics stresses directed guidance toward producing independent, professional work. Further development of technical, iconographic and conceptual concerns and an understanding of the critical, conceptual and theoretical issues surrounding contemporary art are emphasized. We also provide the unique disciplinary perspectives of two full time ceramics professors, and our visiting artist program brings ceramic artists to the campus each semester, many of whom are nationally and internationally recognized.

Located in the Center for Visual Arts, the Ceramics Suite at Boise State supports both traditional and cutting edge practices. Purpose-built in 2019, it features over 6,000 square feet of specialized shop and classroom facilities, with wheel throwing and handbuilding studios, a fully ventilated kiln room with new Bailey gas and electric kilns, a dedicated glaze lab and damp room, a Geil Aquaflow spray booth, de-airing pug mills, a 3D Potter ceramic printer, upper and lower division classrooms, informal gathering and critique spaces, and access to a plaster room for mold making.
Department Overview:

The Department of Art, Design and Visual Studies serves 500 students in the following graduate and undergraduate degrees programs and minors: MFA, Visual Arts; BA in Visual Art; BFA in Visual Art and BFA in Art Education with emphasis areas available in Art Jewelry and Metalsmithing, Drawing and Painting, Ceramics, Photography, Printmaking, and Sculpture; BFA in Graphic Design; BFA in Illustration; BA in History of Art and Visual Culture and minors in History of Art and Visual Culture; Visual Art; and Visual Design.

The department personnel, including twenty-seven full-time faculty members and five staff members, embrace traditional and contemporary approaches toward materials, forms, techniques, and ideas while always seeking the refinements, innovations, and inversions that allow art to convey meaning and agency. We share with our students the physical and intellectual experience of art and craft and assist them with acquiring the skills and knowledge to practice as artists, teachers, theorists, historians, designers and illustrators. Additionally, the department offers rich opportunities for students, faculty and the community to engage in exhibition programming in the Blue Galleries and the Neri Gallery.

Minimum Qualifications:
• Master of Fine Arts (MFA) or equivalent in Ceramics or a related visual arts field
• College-level teaching experience (1 year minimum as instructor of record which can be concurrent with time in graduate school)
• Proficient knowledge of handbuilding, wheel throwing and ceramic casting processes
• Proficiency with firing gas and electric kilns
• Proficiency with glaze mixing, application and firing
• Experience in ceramics facility operations and supervision
• A demonstrated ability to integrate both the history and theory of ceramics into teaching and practice

Preferred Qualifications:
• Knowledge of historical and contemporary studies and practices that engage ceramics as a method of inquiry and visual communication
• Knowledge of ceramic 3D printing
• A record of professional accomplishment with a portfolio of professional work, exhibitions, and/or publications
• Evidence of community engagement and service is highly desirable
• The ability to teach courses in the Department of Art, Design, & Visual Studies outside of the Ceramics curriculum

Required Application Materials:
• Cover letter stating your interests and qualifications, as well as your teaching experience
• Resume or CV that includes a list of courses taught
• Artist Statement
• Creative Portfolio: A pdf with 20 examples of creative work (10 MB limit); identify the title, date, media, and size of each work. For video, please include working links; each sample should be no more than 3 minutes in length
• Teaching Portfolio: A pdf with 20 examples of student work that reflects a range of processes taught (10 MB limit); identify the title, date, media, size, and course level for each example

Please note that our application system only allows for the upload of 5 documents including your CV and cover letter, and there are size limits per file. Consider providing links to evidence items*

If selected for an interview, the Department will ask the applicant for the following additional materials:
• Teaching philosophy statement
• Two sample syllabi

Closing Date:
Priority review of applications will begin on December 15, 2025. Applications will close on January 15, 2026.

For questions regarding this position, please contact Search Committee Co-Chairs Lily Lee lilylee@boisestate.edu and Craig Peariso craigpeariso@boisestate.edu

Salary and Benefits:
Starting salary: $65,000

Our standard faculty contract is a 9-month contract (unless otherwise noted) with pay and benefits spread over 12 months. More information about faculty contract and work days is available here.

Boise State University provides a best-in-class benefits package, including (but not limited to):
• 10.76% University contribution to your ORP retirement fund (Professional and Faculty employees)
• Excellent medical, dental and other health-related insurance coverages
• Tuition fee waiver benefits for employees, spouses and their dependents
• Dual Career Assistance Support for spouses and partners.
• See our full benefits page for more information

Jupiter+ is an ambitious off-site programme run by Jupiter Artland in Scotland. The brainchild of Jupiter’s co-founder, the sculptor Nicky Wilson, it aims to bring world class art out of the gallery and into high streets across Scotland. Now in its fourth year, the programme has previously run in Perth (2022), Ayr (2023) and Paisley (2024). In the 2025 offering, housed in a disused estate agent in Reform Street at the heart of Dundee, Lindsey Mendick’s new installation Growing Pains: You Couldn’t Pay Me to Go Back catches the eye and interest of passersby young and old. In this former retail unit, reimagined as an immersive multi-sensory artwork, the creative use of public space enables the opening of dialogue and issues an invitation, to young people in particular, to imagine themselves as artists. Crucially, Jupiter+ runs a bespoke learning programme in the high street too, providing opportunities to develop critical thinking, collaboration, creative activism and self-development. Jupiter’s Youth Collective ORBIT runs in conjunction with Jupiter+, bringing together young people for a year-long, youth-led programme that has the potential to transform lives.

Growing Pains, an idea and installation that Mendick has called “the estate agents from hell”, draws in new audiences and inspires the next generation of creative practitioners. Mendick’s autobiographical work offers a form of working through, asking the viewer to explore their own personal histories, however difficult that may be. In a previous commission for Jupiter Art Land, Mendick installed Sh*tfaced (2023) in Jupiter’s Steadings Gallery where her ceramic tableaux captured the indulgence and aftereffects of binge drinking culture. Other installations on the site at that time – Shame Spiral and I Tried So Hard to Be Good, also dealt with restraint and abandon and the theme of self-destructive tendencies at play. Now in Growing Pains, Mendick revisits her teenage years through ceramics and film. In so doing, she creates a space for today’s teenagers to talk about what is important to them, about their fears and emotions, hopes and dreams.

At first glance, Growing Pains looks like a typical estate agent. One window is completed covered with advertising showing suburban houses rolling down a leafy hill with the London sky scape beneath. Look closer, however, and you will notice the face of a spotty youth, Disembodied teenage mouths filled with brace work and colorful butterfly hairclips float across the vista. In the other window, advertisements for houses for sale hang in three vertical lines, supported by fine metal link chains that echo the aforementioned brace work. Each advert shows a smart middle-class house with the unnerving text beneath it – Growing Pains: You Couldn’t Pay Me to Go Back There. Something is awry here. Inside the office nothing is as you would expect. A series of half a dozen or so ceramic doll’s houses are set atop pedestals so that visitors can walk around and between them. Glazed in murky shades of browns and greens, each house is purposely cracked open and an array of objects burst forth from within, conveying something of the uncontainable pressures that teenagers face in contemporary times. The fashionable training shoes of Mendick’s youth, a mobile phone, hair straighteners, cigarettes, empty bottles of alcohol, computer game consoles, makeup and items of underwear populate these dilapidated houses, turning what could be a house of dreams into a house of nightmares that seems to be on the verge of dereliction. It’s a troubling scene made even more so when you watch the associated film in the adjoining space where Mendick drives around the areas she grew up in, sharing stories with the viewer. There is no question that Medick’s experience of her teenage years was traumatic for all sorts of reasons. It is an incredibly emotional film and one that shares the uniqueness of her experience while, at the same time, showing the common emotional trials all teenagers share.

What took Mendick to art school in the first place is no mystery. She tells me that at secondary school in north London she benefited from forward thinking art teachers and, from the age of 14, never wanted to do anything else. The rise and reputation of the Young British Artists at that time made anything seem possible. With typical honesty, Mendick confesses to feeling alone and ashamed as a teenager. It was discovering the work of Tracey Emin, she says, that saved her. In 1995 Emin made her now-famous work Everyone I Have Ever Slept With 1963–95. The teenage Mendick made Everyone I Have Ever Kissed, and so began an artistic career that has truly reimagined what ceramics can do, and become, as a critical medium for contemporary art.

Working initially with air drying clay, Mendick didn’t fire her first ceramics until she was 27 years old at the Royal College of Art. While nervous about stepping outside her own boundaries of experience, she has never looked back. She is constantly learning and using different clays, pushing herself and it as a medium. “I think I must be addicted to the constant failure of it”, she says laughing. There is, of course, a battery of troubleshooting, glaze testing and such like to attend to in the process of making, but as Mendick explains: “when you’re an artist, very rarely do you have that, voila, like when a baker opens the oven and suddenly you have all these croissants from nothing. As an artist, you see so much of the process, it’s really hard. But then when I open the kiln, and something I’ve made is finished, I’m able to experience it as a viewer. I think I’m just addicted to that rush”.

As for the medium itself, there is no other medium that is so intrinsically hand to heart for Mendick. Her work is deeply emotionally invested. Mendick again: “everything that I experience in the studio is so diaristic. I can go into the studio and create something that’s based on what’s just happened to me that day. As my work is about diary and autobiography, it seems that these ceramic objects are entities, forged from myself. With ceramics, I feel I’m creating something from nothing. When I go into the studio, it’s really meditative and I can just lose myself in it. I think it’s been really important to me because it has slowed me down quite a bit”.

Mendick has been open about her own battles with mental health and I wondered how difficult it might be to work things though in clay and then reveal them to the world, particularly in Growing Pains which deals with such a vulnerable and difficult stage of life. Mendick shares that she has grown up unable to shake off much of that teenage pain.

“I’ve been waiting probably 10 years to make this show and thinking there’ll be a right time when it doesn’t prick my eyes, talking about some of the things that happen. But then I realised that it was more important to talk about a subject that still feels so raw”. The unresolved nature of Mendick’s teenage troubles prompts us to discuss how some things never leave us. It is with her typical generosity that Mendick explains how, for her, the work connects to these difficult emotions. “One of the reasons it’s so great with Jupiter+ is that this isn’t just a show, it’s a springboard and that’s what I believe art should be. I want the works to be conversational, conversation pieces about difficult things that we have to say to each other. I make like no one’s watching, but I needed something like Jupiter+ to be able to take on the complexity of it as a story”.

The technical challenges of working with clay in this way are considerable. Making the houses in Growing Pains was most challenging of all. A team of people had to carry them to the kiln. Mendick always liked the idea of them cracking, playing with the idea of bursting out the scene, if you like. “I was thinking about how teenagers punctuate everything. You create a life, and then you cannot control them. I think that was what was what was happening with my parents. I think quite often, we go through all of that and we think, but if I had kids, I could do it better. But you can’t, you can’t control it”. There is a sense of that lack of control with ceramics and with Mendick too as she points out “I do think you have to collaborate with your kiln”. That said, there is nothing organic or intuitive about Mendick’s process. Ceramic may be the protagonist with the show built around it, as Mendick puts it, but she is always thinking and planning what is next in the process. She has created an enormously raw, honest and generous artwork here. What is next for Growing Pains depends upon the young people of Dundee.

Beth Williamson is an art historian and writer specialising in modern and contemporary art in Britain, with a particular interest in art education, craft, and ceramics. A former Research Fellow at Tate, she co-curated the exhibition Basic Design at Tate Britain in 2013 and has written widely on British art and pedagogy. Her essays and reviews on art, craft and ceramics have appeared in publications such as The Art Newspaper, Sculpture magazine, Studio International, and Ceramic Review.

Lindsey Mendick – Growing Pains: You Couldn’t Pay Me to Go Back is on view at Jupiter+ (Part of Jupiter Artland), Dundee, between September 12 and December 21, 2025.

Subscribe to Ceramics Now to read similar articles, essays, reviews and critical reflections on contemporary ceramics. Subscriptions enable us to feature a wider range of voices, perspectives, and expertise within the ceramics community.

Captions

• Lindsey Mendick, Growing Pains, 2025. Courtesy of the artist and JUPITER+, Dundee. Photography by Ruth Clark, except otherwise noted

Samuel Sarmiento: Relical Horn is on view at Andrew Edlin Gallery, New York

November 7 – December 20, 2025

Andrew Edlin Gallery is pleased to present Samuel Sarmiento: Relical Horn, the Venezuelan artist’s first solo exhibition in the United States. Born in 1987 and based in Aruba, Sarmiento investigates—through the intertwining of ceramic sculpture and drawing—the fictional possibilities of history, the force of oral traditions, and the pliancy of time: a time that denies a single beginning and falters before envisioning its own end. In Relical Horn, Sarmiento unveils a striking ensemble of kiln-fired ceramic sculptures brimming with overlapping narratives, characters, inscriptions, and both chromatic and volumetric experimentation.

The ancestral technique of ceramics—where human hands extract matter directly from the earth as though tearing away fragments of geological flesh, imprinting form with their fingers and palms, transferring a cerebral vision into mineral entity—anchors Sarmiento’s practice. The clay is then colored, adorned, and fired at temperatures at which any organic matter would be scorched into extinction. He experiments with various patinas, glazes, pigments, and even gold, which, under the kiln’s searing heat, yield kaleidoscopic, granular, and aqueous surfaces. Like the unreliable mechanisms of memory, certain areas of his ceramics are erased, intensified, or transfigured through firing—altered by the unforeseen oxidation that stains and textures their surfaces.

In his works, Sarmiento understands history—whether the so-called official narrative or the myths and legends perpetuated through unwritten means—as a structure built from narrative forces: the multiplicity of interpretive viewpoints, the superimposition of temporal understandings, the blurred edge where fact dissolves into fiction, the myth of historical impartiality, and the paradox of history itself—as both total and infinitesimal, encompassing the world yet anchored in a single, fragile subject.

Sarmiento unsettles our perception of history by fabricating new ruins—archaeological remnants of the present, ultracontemporary fossils that provocatively friction against a scattershot constellation of references. Ancestral and mythological traditions from Central America collide and entwine with canonical images from art history—such as Richard Serra’s Tilted Arc (1981) and Joan Mitchell’s Bonjour Julie (1971)—alongside crucial philosophical texts, from Socratic maieutics to Walter Benjamin’s hermeneutics, and with key films from German cinema, such as Werner Herzog’s Fitzcarraldo (1982), an epic tale in which a romantic dreamer, enthralled by the Italian tenor Enrico Caruso, attempts to build a magnificent opera house in the Brazilian Amazon. Sarmiento also brings into the institutional art sphere the content and sensibility of other forms of transmission—oral tradition, music, poetry, hallucinatory imagery, and fabulation born of psychoactive vision, as in many native Latin American communities. These channels become catalysts for new myths, legends, and fantastic histories.

His works provoke reflection on whether, centuries from now, the events and gestures of our present—so ordinary to us today—will be seen with the same aura of peculiarity and distinction that we project onto the remnants of past civilizations. To work directly with clay and fire is to engage with expanded notions of mineral time and ancestral technique—temporal intervals so vast as to elude comprehension when measured against a human life span that, at best, reaches a mere century.

The Venezuelan artist is also deeply interested in how a classic, a tradition, or a canon comes into being—particularly within Eurocentric systems of thought. He questions what attributes elevate an object or event from the inertia of ordinary existence into singularity, rendering it exceptional. Hence his fascination with what he terms the “relical horn”: a distinctive element that accrues symbolic and historical density, transforming an object into a relic—layering it with temporal sediment that fractures linear history and establishes new coordinates, new points at which history itself is inscribed.

Is such singularity guaranteed by adherence to an aesthetic or narrative program? Might there exist a formula capable of eliciting a specific emotion, much as the German art historian Aby Warburg explored through his Pathosformeln? Could there be a model, a framework, a structure? Questioning what a classic is, South African writer J. M. Coetzee writes: “So we arrive at a certain paradox. The classic defines itself by surviving. Therefore the interrogation of the classic, no matter how hostile, is part of the history of the classic, inevitable and even to be welcomed. For as long as the classic needs to be protected from attack, it can never prove itself classic.”

To possess a horn—this desired, fetishized object—one must first slay a creature of immense grandeur: a rhinoceros, an elephant, or even a unicorn. It is, therefore, a fragment of present yearning bound to an absent body. A boundary is thus drawn: for a time, that body or object served a practical function, and from its absence emerged layers of symbolic existence. In much the same way, when an artist dies or disappears, a trace remains—a proof that they once walked the earth: their work. So it is with relics in the history of Christianity: fragments of bodies, garments, or objects once touched by saints, toward which the faithful direct their prayers and pilgrimages. The fetishism surrounding relics extends equally to civilizations—archaeological remains, cave paintings, ceramic vessels. Our societies yearn for material fragments of the past in order to sustain an increasingly immaterial future.

Sarmiento’s works urge us to question whether today’s digital data—ostensibly eternal, safely stored in invisible clouds—are truly as enduring as the tangible and timeworn matter of stone, clay, or ceramic, which have preserved human marks for millennia. Perhaps these so-called primitive materials are, in their resilience, more advanced than the latest digital devices when it comes to the preservation of knowledge. Thus, the artist writes by hand—graphite on clay—long cursive texts as though to safeguard them: art criticism essays, Latin American short stories, museum exhibition checklists. In a satirical gesture, he imagines how, centuries from now, those same texts might be unearthed by people who neither speak our language nor share our alphabet, leading to the most fanciful conjectures about the mundane lists of an artist whose only modest intent was to confront history—just as we now do with ancient artifacts such as the Phaistos Disc, the Roman dodecahedron, or the Incan quipus.

Sarmiento also underscores the importance of communication vehicles that, within the art world, document the achievements that gradually accumulate into historical record. A copy of Artforum is provocatively paired, in the title of one of his works, with the Rosetta Stone—that carved slab crucial to deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphs. These journals of a “real fiction,” while they validate the art production of a specific context, also expose the collapse of a narrow, self-referential history read by few. Sarmiento points to the small fiefdom we, art workers, inhabit—voluntarily confined, declaring a mere half-acre to be the world, blind to the vast constellation of other stories that have shaped humanity. Of course, this small piece of molded, painted earth still tells us much: beauty, civilization, and the traces of history remain bound to disciplines that are, paradoxically, both revelatory and restricted—accessible to only a few. Touching the paradoxical nerve where the microcosm expands into the macrocosm and vice versa, Sarmiento amplifies the power of oral histories that have long underpinned Caribbean cultures while reflecting the reflux of Western visual art itself.

Sarmiento, like each of us, is both a reader and a writer of history. He is an inventor of truths and a spectator of lies, a victim of memory’s accidents and of forgetfulness. He is the tiger trapped in time—the only animal to bear the stripes of its own cage upon its skin. In Relical Horn, Sarmiento seems to construct his own museum of living relics—objects that never cease to deliberate on truth, to chatter about the narratives of the past. They question themselves restlessly about their origins, their cycles of repetition. A fictive, eternal museum.

Text by Mateus Nunes, PhD

Contact
info@edlingallery.com

Andrew Edlin Gallery
392 Broadway, 2nd Floor
New York, NY 10013
United States

Photos courtesy of the artist and Andrew Edlin Gallery

Captions

• Samuel Sarmiento, Ganda, the Rhino Traveler (NY Version), 2025, Glaze and luster gold on stoneware, 14.5 x 12 x 5 inches / 37 x 31 x 13 cm
• Samuel Sarmiento, Tigers in Love, 2025, Glaze and luster gold on stoneware, 19.5 x 22 x 2 inches / 50 x 56 x 5 cm
• Samuel Sarmiento, Miles Davis – Aranjuez Concert, Spain. 1960., 2025, Glaze and luster gold on stoneware, 13.5 x 15 x 3.75 inches / 34 x 38 x 10 cm
• Samuel Sarmiento, The Hunt of the Unicorn, 1495–1505, 2025, Pigment, glaze and luster gold on stoneware, 12 x 12 x 2.5 inches / 31 x 31 x 6 cm
• Samuel Sarmiento, Richard Serra – Tilted Arc 1981 (New Myths New Legends), 2024, Pigment, glaze and luster gold on stoneware, 6.5 x 6.5 x 1.5 inches / 16 x 16 x 4 cm
• Samuel Sarmiento, Fitzcarraldo 1982 (New Myths New Legends), 2024, Pigment, glaze and luster gold on stoneware, 11.5 x 11.5 x 3.25 inches / 29 x 29 x 8 cm
• Samuel Sarmiento, The Origin of the Stars, 2025, Glaze on stoneware, 28 x 24 x 13 inches / 71 x 61 x 33 cm