Visionary Wallworks
Explore wallworks by artists in Objects: USA 2020. This selection of decorative pieces pushes boundaries in form and materiality, challenging traditional uses of enamel, leather, silver, and clay to create compelling work that is anything but conventional.
Little Johnson, 1969, enamel, courtesy of the Estate of Paul Hultberg and Moderne Gallery.
Originally trained as a painter and printmaker, Paul Hultberg approached his craft essentially as flat abstraction. His attraction to enamel was not so much because of its sculptural potential, but because of its utility for public murals and commercial tableware—allowing him to realize his personal goal of making “art for all.”
Hultberg's multi-panel composition, Little Johnson, pays homage to the Johnson family, the original exhibition’s patrons.
Savage Wall Organizer, Black Edition, 2020, plastics, leather cord, and plywood.
Seattle-based Jay Sae Jung Oh examines the relationship between art and design through furniture and decorative objects. For the Savage series, Jung Oh first constructs an armature of structural elements and found objects, and then conceals them on a surface of jute or leather cord. This technique both conceals and reveals the inner structure of the piece, creating new uses for the wrapped forms.
Platter / Splatter wall sculpture, 2020, silver-plated platters.
In past generations, silver was partly prized for its role in asserting inheritance and wealth. Jaydan Moore recasts this idea as a story about makers, not owners. His method is to reclaim antique pieces of silver and silver plate, then collage them together into expressionist compositions, yielding a complex set of ideas about the meanings embedded in silver's inherited materiality.
On the one hand, Moore’s willingness to slice into historic pieces is an affirmation of their obsolescence. On the other, his work draws attention to the detail and specificity of antique silver. Jaydan Moore is currently completing a three-year residency at the Penland School of Craft.
Untitled wall sculpture, 1958, ceramic.
From small-scale experiments to rigorous large-scale compositions, through torqued, abstracted figural sculpture, John Mason found many expressions over his long career. At each phase of this complex trajectory, he responded to prevailing artistic currents while clearly establishing his own forceful artistic persona.
His untitled wall sculpture represents experimental work with ceramics, as Mason explored the physical properties of clay and its "extreme plasticity." The result is a wallwork that appears to be in a state of constant movement.