Adam Silverman “Ground Control”
Friedman Benda
[Image: Adam Silverman "Untitled" (2016) Stoneware and wood 26.25 x 13.5 x 13.5 in.]
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Friedman Benda presents Adam Silverman’s first solo exhibition in New York. For Ground Control, Silverman presents an entirely new and substantial body of work, including a site-specific installation that demonstrates the universe of forms and surfaces that he has created in his 14-year practice. A catalogue with contributions by Nader Tehrani and Brooke Hodge will accompany the exhibition.
The Los Angeles-based artist has explored different means of creation in architecture and fashion before focusing on clay. This path is evident in Ground Control. In each medium Silverman engages the human body as reference, subject and tool.
The wheel throwing process is an essential part of Silverman’s practice. His forms are strong and deliberate. They command attention whether they are egg shaped with delicately smooth walls or asymmetrical and aggressively punched or punctured. His glazing and throwing practices are rooted in precision and tradition, while embracing experimentation, improvisation and chance. Treating his pots and sculptures like three-dimensional canvases with elaborate glazing techniques, every piece represents both a fresh start and a moment on a continuum.
From 2008 to 2010 Silverman collaborated with Nader Tehrani on “Boolean Valley”, a conceptual, installation piece that traveled from the San Jose Museum of Art to MOCA Los Angeles, to the Nasher Sculpture Center, in which they made a cone-shaped form on the wheel, slip cast it 200 times, then cut each cone horizontally in two and laid out the resulting 400 pieces as a complicated, topographic, landscape installation that responded to each of the architectural spaces within which is was installed.
In 2013 Silverman had a major museum show at The Laguna Art Museum in Laguna Beach California. The show was part retrospective and part newly commissioned installation pieces, including two video collaborations. Also in 2013 an artists monograph; Adam Silverman Ceramics was published by Skira Rizzoli.
Adam Silverman was born in 1963 in New York, NY and received a BFA and a Bachelors of Architecture from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1987 and 1988. He served as the Los Angeles studio director of Heath Ceramics from January 2009 to May 2014. His work is included in the permanent collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA; the Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas, TX; the Israel Museum, Jerusalem, Israel; and the Museum of Contemporary Craft, Portland, OR. Since beginning his professional ceramic career in 2002, he has exhibited regularly in Japan.
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Schedule
from May 05, 2016 to June 11, 2016