NYAB Event - Jeff Schwarz “Stacks”

Jeff Schwarz “Stacks”

OUTLET

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Outlet Fine Art presents a solo exhibition featuring new ceramic work by Jeff Schwarz titled STACKS. This exhibition marks the first one-person exhibition for the artist in New York and the first to focus specifically on the artist’s wheel-thrown ceramics.

Jeff Schwarz is a unique voice among the ever-expanding field of ceramics. An accomplished craftsman firmly grounded in technique, over the past year Schwarz has pushed the expressive nature of his material and, much like the late Peter Voulkos, seeks to reinvent ceramics as a meeting ground for painting and sculpture.

In STACKS, Schwarz draws inspiration from both historic and contemporary sources. His mastery of traditional wheel-thrown techniques is revealed in the accuracy and consistency of his cylinder shapes that range in size from tabletop to colossal and gives the exhibition its title. Unlike many of his contemporaries, Schwarz doesn’t completely abandon the semblance of utility. For the artist, form is “an absolute distilled essence” carefully considered and constructed. Schwarz then quickly departs from tradition attacking each work with color-rich slip glazes laid on in aggressive gestures that pull from street graffiti and contemporary fashion design. Many of the works have square windows cut in the surface further distancing each work from its functional heritage and in others one stack sits inside another layering their effect.

Mine is a synthesized abstraction of influences allowing intuition and invention to play out in my work. I live in New York City. I am a product of that environment. The change in my work is a direct result of my changing physical space. The continuous scrawls of text/imagery scrolled across the city’s veneer, are represented in the surface treatment of this new work. Just as one new message is created the newest dialogue dilutes an older one. One ‘tag’ replaces another. The surfaces and the construction of my pieces are approached intentionally and direct much like the city’s surface and like the calligraphic surfaces of the Tamba Ware potters of Japan. The difficulty is finding a balance between the now of my place and the memory of my past. -Jeff Schwarz, Brooklyn, 2016

Jeff Schwarz (b.1975) graduated from Syracuse University in 2006 (MFA). He has taught ceramics at various intuitions including Braddock Carnegie Library, Pittsburgh; Community College of Allegheny County, West Mifflin; Clay Art Center, Port Chester; University of Syracuse; and Pratt at Munson-Williams Proctor Institute, Utica. Recent group exhibition include Aqua Art Fair, Miami, Houston Contemporary Art Fair, Houston, Jay Invitational of Clay, Jay; Outlet Fine Art, Brooklyn; Revision Space, Pittsburgh. One-person exhibitions include: Studio 5013, Pittsburgh, Clay Art Center, Port Chester, Revision Space, Pittsburgh. This is the artist first one-person exhibition in New York.