Gardens are Joan Bankemper’s inspiration, whether she’s crafting a vase-form covered in flowers and bees or helping plan community gardens. At Chelsea’s Nancy Hoffman Gallery, Bankemper combines handmade and found flowers, vessels and spiritual beings in this riotous sculpted garden. (On view through Sept 1st).
A figure reclines in front of a baguette, friends walk in the woods and here, a young woman chats on the phone while resting on a huge container of an oversized art supply in ceramic sculpture and plates by Berlin-based artist Isabelle Fein. These diminutively sized snippets of life are an essay on the charms of the everyday. (At Jack Hanley Gallery on the Lower East Side through August 18th).
Valerie Hegarty’s deliciously bizarre watermelon rind takes a bite out of summer at Asya Geisberg Gallery’s fanciful summer group show of ceramic sculpture. (In Chelsea through August 11th).
Liz Craft’s speech bubbles, made into faces by the shapes of protruding ceramic mushrooms, are a standout in JTT’s summer group show, Dirge, which considers how artists engage with accounts of history. Here, Craft merges contemporary text-message bubbles with pre-electrical light (a candle). The mushroom face suggests a voice from 70s counterculture speaking from the void. (On the Lower East Side through July 28th).
Swedish artist Joakim Ojanen’s odd ceramic heads resemble gourds and various animals, in this case, a bird. The creatures formerly manifest themselves in two dimensions as drawings. Now in the round, they allow Ojanen’s strange vision to inhabit space with us. (On view at The Hole on the Lower East Side through July 7th).
