Adam Silverman: New Pots & Sculptures

Edward Cella Art & Architecture is pleased to present New Pots and Sculptures by Los Angeles based Adam Silverman. This exhibition will feature a new sequence of Silverman’s highly acclaimed pots, alongside small to medium scale sculptures. New to this body of work are a series of large format sculptural pieces intended to extend the fundamental tenets of the artist’s practice as a potter towards their plastic realization as freestanding, large scale, three dimensional works.

Silverman’s experimental practice as a potter is driven by his interest in the catalytic and elemental nature of his medium. The artist seeks an unlikely marriage of the formal and the primordial, transforming raw materials through a practice that invokes both the discipline of design and the exploratory investigations of organic risk. New Pots and Sculptures represents a new chapter of material and formal development in the artist’s practice, while also contributing to the larger narrative of its established evolution.

The artist’s previous forays into large format sculpture have been site specific institutional placements (The Museum of Contemporary Art, LA, and the Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth TX). This exhibition presents Silverman’s first opportunity to showcase large scale sculpture driven by dictates of his own choosing in a non-institutional context. Guided by independently set material and aesthetic parameters, he will present ambitious new pieces that expand on the material vernacular he has forged to date, and for which he has been internationally recognized. Silverman continues to challenge the materials and methods of his craft towards new and unexpected results.

While the tradition of Silverman’s medium is inherited, the rigor with which he revitalizes and repositions it is unique. Every aspect of his process is controlled by his intervention and employ. From his use of handcrafted bespoke materials, to his unique finishing techniques, Silverman’s consummate investment in the minutiae of process and the specificity of material reveals an exhaustive commitment to the advancement of his craft. With the deliberate planning and structural intervention of an architect, Silverman re-directs the presence and potential of his medium. His unique material preoccupation luxuriates in beautiful aberration, in imperfection, visual interest, tactility, and detail. His work seeks to draw from the material and conceptual inconsistencies of the organic, rather than to conceal them beneath a reductive veneer. Silverman composes his objects simply and elegantly from the innate properties of his material, medium, and process. The artist’s work reflects its process and methods, and yet realizes an expressiveness that transcends the confines of its materiality. The resulting work conveys an elemental solidity, immediacy, and an incontrovertible resolve.

Adam Silverman has been widely exhibited throughout the United States and Japan. His large-scale installation piece, Boolean Valley, created in collaboration with architect Nader Tehrani, has been exhibited at The San Jose Museum of Art, The Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles (MOCA), and The Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas. He has recently completed a project for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), and is currently working on a major site specific project for The Kimbell Art Museum, opening October 2012, to commemorate the museum’s 40th anniversary. This site specific installation will consist of large scale vessels created entirely from natural materials harvested from the construction site of the museum’s new Renzo Piano building. Silverman will also be exhibited in November 2012 in Tokyo Japan, as part of Function Dysfunction, a three person show at the Tomio Koyama Gallery’s new Shibuya location, a contemporary art gallery widely acclaimed as one of the best in Japan. The artist will also have a forthcoming monograph published by New York based Rizzoli. Adam Silverman is currently partner and studio director of Heath Ceramics, a venerable 62 year old California maker of dinnerware and tile. New Pots and Sculptures was organized to present concurrently alongside Ken Price Sculpture: A Retrospective, at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.