This summer Jason Jacques Gallery presents Behind the Curtain: Treasures from the Vault, which evokes the experience of visiting the vaunted ceramic vault in upstate New York where the gallery maintains its collection. More than two dozen ceramic artists and companies, masters of the Art Pottery Renaissance, will be represented in this unmissable exhibition, including Taxile Doat, Galileo Chini, T.A.C. Colenbrander, Paul Daschel, and Pierre Adrien Dalpayrat. Together these artists pushed the boundaries of clay and explored innovative surfaces in Japonist, Art Nouveau, and Art Deco designs.
“The artists presented in the exhibition are pioneers of modern ceramic art,” says Jason Jacques, principal of his eponymous gallery. “They paved the way for the ascension of ceramic, and its uncontested place in contemporary art.”
Behind the Curtain reveals the diverse formal potential of the ceramic medium in this tour de force exhibition of 100 works. Abstract and representational motifs, innovative developments, and the impact of the overall whole inform the curatorial approach to this exhibition.
“As the Jason Jacques business approaches its 30th anniversary later this year, we inaugurate our celebration of visionary designs and techniques in ceramic art from the beginning of the last century,” says Jason T. Busch, director of the gallery. “This important period of production - the foundation of the gallery’s collection - is when European artists began to boldly experiment with glazes and forms with amazing success.”
The gallery’s largest group exhibition to date, Behind the Curtain will provide a wide-reaching survey of styles and design movements in ceramic art, from functional vessels to decorative sculpture, while emphasizing the clay medium’s role in the visual arts from the turn of the 20th century forward. Viewers will be able to witness the narrative arc of technical, aesthetic, and experimental developments in ceramic during a fascinating moment in its history.
Exhibited artists and firms include:
Amphora, Arabia, Thorvald Bindesbøll, Ernest Bussière, Ernest Carrière, Jean-Joseph Carriès, Ernest Chaplet, Marcel Chevalier, Galileo Chini, T.A.C. Colenbrander, Arthur Craco, Paul Dachsel, Pierre-Adrien Dalpayrat, Émile Decoeur, Taxile Doat, Valdemar Engelhardt, Atelier de Glatigny, Adolf Hjorth, Georges Hoentschel, Paul Jeanneney, Léon Kann, Edmond and Raoul Lachenal, Max Laeuger, Lucien Lévy-Dhurmer, Clément Massier, Pietro Melandri, Paul Milet, Théo Perrot, Henri Robalbhen, Theodore Schmutz-Baudiss, Séraphin Soudbinine, Eduard Stellmacher, Fachschule Teplitz, Ernst Wahliss, and Zsolnay.
