Inventive Tabletop Objects
Explore tabletop objects by artists in our current exhibition, OBJECTS: USA 2020. This selection of decorative pieces pushes boundaries in form and materiality, demonstrating astonishing creativity and cutting-edge tactility.
Red Gold Pour Box, 2019, red gold leaf, gesso, pigment
Nancy Lorenz incorporates techniques from traditional East Asian craft, notably lacquer, into her functional and decorative work. To realize her characteristic boxes, Lorenz applies lacquer, mother-of-pearl inlay and gold leaf with painterly gestures to form refined and sophisticated products. Lorenz currently lives and works in New York City.
Soft Rock (Black), 2020, ceramic, flocking, aluminum, solid surface, copper, nylon rat tail cord, brass
Philly-based, John Souter creates enigmatic, sensuous, and often humorous sculptural objects that are incorporated from an expansive material language. His current body of work, Soft Rocks and Scratchers, examines the masking of information to alter and influence perception, as well as the values of truthfulness and falseness.
Yellowave (blonde), 2020, earthenware, porcelain slip, glaze, synthetic hair
Alongside traditional folk and decorative art motifs, the flotsam of international pop culture finds itself on the surface of Jiha Moon’s pieces. Video games, emoticons, internet memes, fortune cookies, and kitsch knickknacks all serve as Moon’s bottomless well of inspiration. In 2014, she began exhibiting ceramics, which draw from East Asian traditions, but are swept up into the referential whirlwind of Moon’s broader sensibility. Jiha Moon currently lives and works in Detroit, Michigan.
Soft Rock (Blue), 2020, ceramic, flocking, aluminum, solid surface, copper, nylon rat tail cord, brass
“The Soft Rock series dances around the question of how do we, as a culture, decipher the validity of information? How do we discern what is real? What is not real? I wanted to create objects that bent and distorted perceptual values through the manipulation of material hierarchies, processes, and identity.” – John Souter
Psychedelic Corn Smut, 2020, glass, wire, moldable epoxy, thread, synthetic hair
As densely populated as a sixteenth-century grotto, and as animated as a Japanese manga, the collaborative work of Pamela Sabroso and Alison Siegel bursts with color and exuberance. These two New Yorkers are unafraid of toying with kitsch references, as grass skirts, tassels, and tiny blossoms sprout unpredictably from forms like Psychedelic Corn Smut. Sabroso and Siegel's pieces are entirely of the present moment: a searching exploration of natural forces, at a time when the environment is itself in turmoil.
Silver Pour Box, 2020, silver leaf, gesso, pigment
Nancy Lorenz's adolescence in Japan informs much of her work, as she combines opulent and ordinary materials in her pieces, making every object an elegant, meditative, and mesmerizing study in gold.