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).
