This week, Abigail Ogilvy Gallery LA intern Rebecca Connolly visited the American Museum of Ceramic Art (AMOCA), which has been open for 20 years in the heart of Pomona, CA, just an hour east of Los Angeles. A ceramicist and art historian, Rebecca shared her thoughts on the visit.
AMOCA is committed to exhibiting the diversity of the medium through displaying the practice, duality, and history of ceramics throughout its museum space.
Exhibition View; REVEAL: Recent Acquisitions 2020-2023 on view now at AMOCA until July 2024. (American Museum of Ceramic Art)
Before entering the Making in Between exhibit, located toward the back end of the museum, visitors are greeted on the main floor by REVEAL, showcasing the museum's impressive collection that they acquired from 2020 to 2023, featuring 39 ceramicists. With such an outstanding introduction to AMOCA’s space, aims, and collectors’ aesthetic, the viewer can get a sense of the mutuality the medium can have on the artist and what the artist does with their chosen medium. From starting the exhibition with sculptural and functional work, to teapot-lined walls, to structurally profound yet fragile masterpieces; it is clear ceramics takes on the ideal of functionality in more ways than one. From the physical usage of ceramic tableware, cups, pots, vases, jars, plates and more, to the mental fortitude that mobilizes ceramicists to make something out of nothing, there is no end in sight for what functionality is and can be in ceramics. The curator carefully plays with the vast collection they have gathered over the past three years, placing pieces that seem to be in conversation with one another in this exhibit, a theme that emerges throughout the museum.
Beatrice Wood plate, n.d.; Robert Arneson ‘Self Portrait Plate (Vitruvian Man)’, American Museum of Ceramic Art.
Two pieces that particularly struck me to be subtly hinting at one another are Beatrice Wood’s plate and Robert Arnesons’s ‘Self-Portrait Plate (Vitruvian Man)’. Although these two pieces are placed with significant distance between them, we are greeted with Wood’s plate first, then Arnesons’s towards the end of the exhibit. Within the limitless medium, there are hundreds of millions of casual commonalities that do not deter the originality of the idea, but showcase the genius of the artistic mind and how ceramics is the mobilizer, not the buffer, to follow through with these glorious, playful and thoughtful ideas. I thought it was clever to place these two plates not next to each other, or within even the same room, but instead with considerable distance between one another. This impressed upon me that although these two plates physically resemble one another, they were created with incredible distance and no knowledge that the other existed, and they may not have ever been viewed together until this exhibition gave them the chance to do so.
With ceramics in particular, there is no singular great idea that has not been completed in centuries past, as ceramics is one of the oldest and most significant art mediums to date. It is very intriguing that the same porcelain celadon teapot and set of teacups has been created and recreated a million times, but that this same concept can extend to an even more complex decorative, luster plate with a man in the middle. The viewer instead can reflect on how these two plates, although nearly identical in concept, are then featured in the same exhibition. The curator, or rather the AMOCA collection as a whole, is not interested in having unique one a kind pieces, because this is not possible to achieve in the ceramic medium, but rather to have the collection prove the dexterity of the medium and how the smallest of differences and idiosyncrasies between the two similar plates can bring up a meaningful thought or discussion. These two plates exist singularly, but when placed in the same exhibit they mirror and reflect the joy and self-mobilization that is ceramics. This same idea of mirrored patterns is further shown as viewers make their way to the next gallery for Making in Between: Queer Clay.
Exhibition View(s); Making in Between: Queer Clay on view until December 2023, American Museum of Ceramic Art.
Making in Between in an on-going exhibition theme by AMOCA that aims to feature ceramicists that are amongst intersections of identity and artist, giving the often marginalized and under-represented artists a place to shine and exhibit their art amongst other colleagues who share a similar background and/or identity. In the exhibition Making in Between: Queer Clay, 12 artists are featured that are actively using the ceramic medium to best express and explore themes regarding identity, sexuality, (in)visibility and reclaiming representations and spaces of and for the LGBTQ+ community. The artist of particular interest here is Julia Kunin. Here Julia’s work is honored and placed on both sides of an installation wall, their sculptures are sandwiched and in conversation with Vick Quezada (seen on the left-hand side of the exhibition view) and Nicki Green (seen on the right-handside of the exhibition view). Kunin’s work largely explores the theme of existence within its own realm. Stemming from the radical idea of femme fatale, Kunin reimagines this principle in their own right, creating a newfound visibility for a previously invisible group of queer identity. Kunin’s work devoids a binary or limitations on what can or cannot exist in their plane and their medium, completely transforming the natural medium of clay to a futuristic, sci-fi-like relic. Kunin’s ‘Rainbow Dream Machine’ (un)ironically faces Quezada’s ‘Stainless Remains’ as seen in the exhibition view, thus creating a paradigm and conversation with one another, making the visitor think about the deeper context of these two pieces opposing one another.
Julia Kunin’s ‘Rainbow Dream Machine’, ceramic, luster glaze, 2019, American Museum of Ceramic Art
Vick Quezada’s ‘Stainless Remains’, ceramic luster glaze, n.d, American Museum of Ceramic Art.
Moving onward to the other wall featuring Kunin’s three smaller pieces, visitors notice three additional vessels opposing Kunin’s. These are Green’s ‘Vessel of Revelation 1 and 2’ and ‘Interlocking’. Green’s work plays with the idea of becoming within queer identity and bodies, making both functional pieces for queer bodies to exist within (not pictured) and abstract sculptures for queer people to relate and feel understood and seen by. To me, the color scheme and positioning of these 6 pieces seems too coincidental to not remark on them in conversation with one another, supporting their unique attributes and creating a more poignant narrative when reflected on as a greater whole. That perhaps they are positioned in this exhibition as if they exist in this binary-less realm that both artists are aiming to achieve in their own independent practice. Together Kunin and Green’s sculptures strengthen one another’s narratives and allow the viewer to escape into this queer portal where they enchant, entice and enhance the qualities of the claybody with the colors of glaze and luster on the surface of these vessels.
Julia Kunin’s ‘After Jacovitz’ (left), ‘Keys’ (middle), and ‘Vasarely Eyes’ (right), American Museum of Ceramic Art.
American Museum of Ceramic Art, Pomona, CA
Julia Kunin's artworks will be on view at Abigail Ogilvy Gallery's Los Angeles location from January 2 - February 10, 2024 as part of Under this mask, another mask curated by Sam Adams.
Blog written by Abigail Ogilvy Gallery intern Rebecca Connolly.
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