Phase Change
Phase Change
Curtis Center for the Arts
2349 E. Orchard Road, Greenwood Village, CO 80121
September 19-October 31, 2020
Admission: Free
Review by Jillian Blackwell
Phase Change is the fruitful result of a collaborative effort between K Rhynus Cesark, Andrea Gordon, Annakatrin Kraus, Bruce Price, Sara Ransford, Chandler Romeo, Martha Russo, and Tina Suszynski—a group of ceramic artists who completed the “Artists Invite Artists” residency at Red Lodge Clay Center in Red Lodge, Montana. The title of the exhibition, Phase Change, nominally highlights the artists’ investigation of ceramic materiality, surfaces, and firing styles. However, the scope of their exploration is much more holistic, encompassing the treatment of the gallery space and the way the objects were made as well as how they interact with the viewer.
No facet of the exhibition was spared from the application of the transformative theme, most notably the gallery space itself. The pedestals, vitrines, and temporary walls that would normally isolate pieces and divide up space have been rearranged and repurposed in an unorthodox way. The artists have clumped together the pedestals to form larger islands. They’ve turned them upside down and on their sides, opening up interiors and creating corners and nooks for the works to nestle into. Additionally, they have thrown the vitrines into a pile and stacked them up like cardboard boxes, all with their single opening turned to the side. This repositioning subverts the intended purpose of a vitrine to enclose and protect, which opens up the pieces contained within to vulnerability, allowing them to breathe and interact with the viewer in a more friendly manner.
Martha Russo, klynge (no. 3), 2020, porcelain, casting slip, glaze materials, epoxy, metal, wood, expanded polystyrene, and paper. Image by DARIA.
Martha Russo, incubo, 2020, paper clay, glaze materials, glass, metal, and found objects. Image by DARIA.
Martha Russo’s work is particularly aggressive in its interplay with the temporary gallery walls. Klinge (no. 3), a massive conglomerate of slip-cast ceramic pieces, grows like barnacles off the corner of a V-shaped set of walls turned on its side. Another piece, Incubo, is a landslide of circular trays full of ceramic forms, pools of glaze, and other less identifiable objects. These trays spill down the side of a temporary wall that is propped up at an angle.
It is at first jarring to see the gallery furniture treated in this manner, relaxing the pretenses of a traditional white cube space. It feels quite odd to see the unpainted interior of a pedestal or the cable holding the v-shaped walls together, obviously only there for structural support and no aesthetic reason. But as I walked round and round the space, I ultimately found it refreshing that the artists let no arbitrary boundary or customary use hold them back. They overturned the furniture and dismissed a stuffy gallery atmosphere, setting no bounds on their exploration.
This untethered exploration is evident in the works as well, which reflect much thought and processing. In many instances the thought seems incomplete—not in a bad way, but in an open-ended way. Many of the pieces in this exhibition look like gateways to more play and not terminuses of long practice. Often, the development of an artist’s work can feel very slow and incremental, each step measured and well-tested. One can feel this kind of closed-off finality in a handful of pieces that came from an individual artist’s solitary studio practice. In contrast, the most striking works were those that involved more than one hand.
The two connected works on the bottom left: Annakatrin Kraus, N15, 2019. On the top, from left to right: Tina Suszynski and Annakatrin Kraus, N22, 2019; Sara Ransford, K Rhynus Cesark, Annakatrin Kraus, and Martha Russo, N31, 2019. In the center: Martha Russo, N9, 2019, and on the right, part of Andrea Gordon, Chandler Romero, and K Rhynus Cesark, Balled, 2019. On the bottom right: Chandler Romero and Andrea Gordon, N10, 2019. Image by DARIA.
Sara Ransford, K Rhynus Cesark, Annakatrin Kraus, and Martha Russo, N31, 2019, on the left, with Tina Suszynski and Annakatrin Kraus, N22, 2019, in the background. Image by DARIA.
The collaborative works are grouped in two main areas, named Nexus and Nexus Pod. Befitting the titles of the areas, not only does each work in Nexus and Nexus Pod contain a dialogue within itself, they are also arranged in such a way as to encourage a dialogue between the individual objects. In just one small section, N31 (by Ransford, Cesark, Kraus, and Russo), a tiny tower of components perches atop a vitrine, which holds below a red petaled vessel (N10 by Romeo and Gordon). On the other side of the vitrine sits a pair of perforated and spiky objects (N15 by Kraus), and through the back of the vitrine one can see a lumpy, reclining soda-fired object (N9 by Russo).
Inside of the pedestals, from left to right: Chandler Romeo, N21, 2019; Annakatrin Kraus, N20, 2019; Bruce Price and K Rhynus Cesark, N19, 2019; and Tina Suszynski, Martha Russo, and Annakatrin Kraus, N18, 2019. Image by DARIA.
Tina Suszynski, Martha Russo, and Annakatrin Kraus, N18, 2019. Image by DARIA.
No object stands alone, and they are all in conversation with each other, calling back to the conversations that must surely have taken place between the artists during their residency. The objects are on top of the cluster of pedestals, hanging from the sides, and tucked inside and behind. This arrangement calls upon the viewer to do their own exploring, looking behind, around, and within. I even found myself on my hands and knees to get a better view of N18 (by Suszynski, Cesark, Price, and Russo), N19 (by Price and Cesark), N20 (by Kraus), and N21 (by Romeo), which are inside of two pedestals, turned on their side, lying flat on the floor.
The playfulness and unpretentiousness of Phase Change is refreshing. The artworks and the artists’ statements make no claims to the grandiose, and instead convey a pure joy that comes from making and working with other creatives. It is within this message that the exhibition manages to make one more connection to a change of state—that of our current world. We are all figuring out how to continue to function, and how to find joy and remain open, curious, and adventurous during the trying times of a global pandemic. These artists show us the way, embracing uncertainty and reveling in it.
Jillian Blackwell is a Denver-based artist and art educator. She holds a BA in Fine Arts with a Concentration in Ceramics from the University of Pennsylvania.
