If images of factories, billowing smokestacks and oil-slicked water sound alien to traditional ceramic decoration, the title of Ken Price’s mid-90s series, ‘Plutoware,’ at Matthew Marks Gallery plays along. Intended to be a pun on the word pollution, the iconic sculptor’s scenes of environmental damage set up a fundamental contrast between intimately scaled and beautifully colored plates, bowls and vessels and depictions of giant manufacturing and co-generation plants. Though Price’s work would seem to project despair, his wife, Happy Price explains an alternative point of view, saying, ‘When you look at the Pluto Ware some people only see pollution, darkness, and grim and then other people—like myself—see a kind of strange dark beauty.’ (On view through Dec 18th in Chelsea).
Tag: pollution
Alexis Rockman at Sperone Westwater Gallery
Human-created pollution vies with a vividly colored frog to attract the eye in Alexis Rockman’s 2012 watercolor titled ‘Effluent,’ now on view at Sperone Westwater Gallery. Rockman’s artful activism appears alongside new field drawings from New Mexico of plants and animals from the region that are extinct, living or threatened. (On view on the Lower East Side through August 3rd).
Elias Sime at James Cohan Gallery
Addis Ababa-based artist Elias Sime carries away electronic components by the truck-full from Africa’s largest open-air market in order to create gorgeous installations like this colorful collage at Chelsea’s James Cohan Gallery. (Through Oct 17th).
Elias Sime, Tightrope 7, reclaimed electronic components and wires on panel, 8 ½ x 39 ¼ feet (estimated), 2009-2014.
Alexis Rockman at Sperone Westwater
Inspired by a news story about a dolphin that swam into Brooklyn’s Gowanus Canal and died the same day from the pollution, New York artist Alexis Rockman conjured this vision of the canal as a cauldron of contamination in which the strong adapt to survive. (At Sperone Westwater on the Lower East Side through Nov 2nd).