Nomad

JANUARY 2021 — NYC — Nomad, a solo exhibition by Aneta Regel has opened in New York City and will run through the 29th of January.

Nomad will be Jason Jacques Gallery’s last on-site exhibition at the gallery’s historic Upper East side location, as we are beginning the exciting journey of moving down-town. The gallery will operate virtually through next fall. We are thrilled to step into the new year and open a new chapter in the gallery’s history, which has spanned over three decades and presented the world with a sweeping vision of ceramics from the nineteenth century through to the present day and, most importantly, on forward.

Naturally, we are elated to take this opportunity to stage a solo exhibition of Aneta Regel’s recent work.

Regel affirms that she is not a potter, but a ceramic sculptor. Her work has always had a whimsical, buoyant undercurrent guided by the visually propulsive power of color, form, and texture. In Regel’s hands these concepts yield physical forms of unwavering beauty and complexity: amalgams of porcelain, stone, slip, and glaze metamorphosed by heat so that they seem to have sprung up from the earth itself. 

Her work makes open, sweeping references to inert natural forms; they bring to mind something between tree and stone with a slightly fungal propensity for playfulness— coral perhaps. The sculptures stand, bend, lean, stoop, and recline as though toying with the idea of body language: a certain refinement of motion and gestural grace permeates the artwork. Even contortions emit charm as the idea of posture is hinted at.

It is an enchanting sort of anthropomorphism because Regel sculpts as though to indicate rather than articulate the idea of a body. It’s sculpture caught between abstraction and figuration but entirely unconcerned with either— non-referential naturalism, if ever there were such a thing.

Stone (both presented and represented in her work) makes an important contribution to the materiality of Regel’s artistic practice. Her technique of mixing porcelain with gravel, placing stones into the clay, and subsequently allowing the clay to shrink and crack around the rock inside the kiln makes for a sensational sort of indeterminacy as the artwork rises to the challenge of forming and reforming itself.

In it’s own way the material teaches us about strengthening through growth and change in the face of obstacles. Like life, sculpting clay is a process of iteration and reiteration mediated by the artist’s hands and the transformative power of the kiln. 

This time around, Regel’s work sounds a resounding tone of joy.

Most recently, Aneta Regel's work has been aquired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York city. Regel took home the International Ceramics Biennale’s 2019 prize for excellence after having been nominated as a finalist for the Loewe Craft Prize the previous year.  Her work has been exhibited globally, and may be found in the public collections of the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, CoCA at the York Museum of Modern Art in the UK, Westerwald Museum in Germany, and the World Ceramics Museum Icheon Korea, PCI Fitch in the UK, and Sweden’s Handelsbankens Konstförening. She has shown at the Tate Modern,  Feb Laznia Center of Contemporary Arts in Poland, and the Saatchi Museum Gallery, among other institutions. She took part in the British Ceramics Biennale, an event which celebrates global contemporary ceramics. She was the prize-winner of the ‘Highlights English Industry Award,’ and a member of the sculptors’ British Royal Company.