Changelings of Intuition
1810 Gallery Displays the Dynamic Ceramics of Clarissa Pezone in her Exquisite Corpse Collection Words Andrew C. Russell
“B
aroque” is a term of towering richness. Often, we take it as a descriptor for any number of classicist tropes, those that bring to mind images of ornate and harmonious displays of decorative order. But there is another, antiquated half of the definition, taken from an old jeweler’s term referring to pearls of irregular shapes. It describes the mineral’s tendency to transgress any imposed notions of order, to twist into any shape its inner life compels it toward. In the natural world, the baroque is something bizarre, even grotesque. It is the art of the coral reef, where strange creatures grow, bloom, burrow and colonize across any hospitable surface. I’m reminded of this when gazing at Black Widow, one of the newer earthenware sculptures by Clarissa Pezone. It is the torso of a woman, gesturing delicately upward in a state of repose, quite human-like, by way of the sea nymph or the arachnid. Her skin is blooming with plants, desert flowers, spiders and barnacles, and a dozen glowing-white eyes. It is an alien re-imagining of The Birth of Venus. Across the room, a cactus emerges from the protective cocoon of a human body; miniature vessels and mugs sprout rows of realistic teeth, jarring but elegant, like the anthropoid stand-in for pearls in an ancient inland kingdom. Each item in the showing is startlingly realized, even though Pezone is still in the thick of her own artistic discovery. Exquisite Corpse, the artist’s latest exhibit at 1810 Gallery, is a feast of different techniques she has been working on over the past year or so, all to success. The few constants in the items on display are the medium—ceramics and the mastery of texture. Some of her newer pieces eschew the phantasmagoria of her surreal work for a brilliant human realism, some of them the product of a workshop she recently took with world-renowned Tip Toland. Pezone is a true seeker, whose work is full of beauty, humor and otherworldliness in equal measure. We took the chance to visit the artist and her creations in person at 1810 Gallery, where they will be on display until the end of the month. We learned about the goals, themes and imagery that keep her artistic gears furiously whirring.
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Issue 218 • July 18 – August 1, 2016
Photo by Jesse Vasquez
Photo by Jesse Vasquez
Photo by Jesse Vasquez
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