Against the backdrop of California Clay, dominated by oversized Expressionism and slapstick Funk, two artists emerged with a totally contrary vision: Ken Price and Ron Nagle. Based in Los Angeles and the Bay Area respectively, both were miniaturists with exquisite color sense and intense, perfectionist mastery of their craft. They were also quintessentially of the West Coast, with flashes of hot rod and surf aesthetics popping up in their work. Of the two, Nagle remained more connected to the specific forms of functional ceramics. In particular, he adopted the drinking cup as a consistent leitmotif, treating it much as a painter treats a rectangle of canvas.
The seemingly simple typology—just a concavity with a handle sticking out on one side—is in his hands an infinite experimental space, ranging across a vast territory of palette and texture, historic reference, and emotional affect. Nagle’s expansive vision is all the more impressive given that he hardly ever makes a work more than six inches in any dimension. He has said that the work can nonetheless “allude to a much bigger place, because it’s so small your imagination has to fill in all that space that’s not there.”¹
¹ Press release for “Ron Nagle: Getting to No,” Matthew Marks Gallery, 2019.