No perfect union, but still worth fighting for: Gehad Abedullah's "Marriage"
C.S. Lewis suggests that angels tell us to “fear not” because they are so fearsome. As corroborating evidence, he quotes scripture: the seraphim are described as massive creatures with great occlusive wings and bodies covered with eyes. To stand in the presence of one would be a terrifying thing. And it is by this sign that we may know them. Being not of this earth, the divine is not likely to be beautiful by earthly standards, and hey, what do we mortals know about celestial glory anyway?
Gabriella Gentile may have been drawn to the seraphim for incendiary reasons: they’re fire angels, and she, as a ceramicist, relies on high heat to finish her stoneware properly. Anyone who has ever slipped a piece into a kiln has said a few prayers to the powers that govern the flame. Her angelic vessels are made according to the prophetic blueprint, especially “Angelus Aureus Belli,” the celestial being as a frightening and alien protector. Flat red ocular discs emerge from bulges on the grey-gold surface of the seraphim’s body. To better peer into your wicked, unworthy soul, the artist has tilted them at skeptical angles. If you’ve never felt scrutinized by a vase before (who has?), you may be taken by surprise by these scanning eyes, no two of which belong to the same set. Its gold-plated wings do cover its body, but there’s no trace of modesty or defensiveness. Possible as it is to put something in this pot, it really isn’t meant as a receptacle.
Biblically sound: Gabriella Gentile's ceramic angel
This means Gentile fits right in at Evening Star Studio (11 Monitor St.), a showplace for experimental ceramics that ride the line between pottery and ornamental sculpture. Under the direction of gallerist Beth DiCara and curator Doris Caçoilo — both of whom regularly exhibit at Evening Star — the garden apartment space highlights fired work that interrogates the idea of containment. At its best, the gallery mounts tiny rebellions against the tyranny of utility, and “Stick Around for Joy,” a group show featuring nine mischief-makers in 3D, feels like a quintessential Evening Star sighting. Technically, all of these pieces are good for holding things. Their makers are thinking just as much about what they’re letting go.
Gehad Abedullah, for instance, lets two tipped stoneware pitchers dance a pas de deux. One is a little darker and a bit more stout than the other, but they’ve got the same volume, and neither seems more important or more prominent than the other. They’re smushed together at their bases and suspended over a saucer, and attached by two handles that belong to both receptacles at once, or perhaps neither. Depending on the angle at which you approach the piece — or maybe the mood you’re in — you’ll see these cups reaching for an embrace, or struggling for position, or defying centripetal forces, or just pulling apart. They’ll be no disentangling one pitcher from the other without a dreadful shatter of clay, but their alliance is an uneasy one, and any liquid poured into these pitchers is going to be precariously contained. Abedullah calls it “Marriage,” and it whirls us well past the honeymoon phase.
Yet a marriage — even a turbulent one — is an awesome thing. Much like a seraphim, it can be strange and stormy to behold, but if we adjust our expectations and look at it correctly, we may find ourselves surprised by joy. In a different spring show, sculptor in metal Robert Koch stuck up for weeds, making a strong visual case that their tenacity, adaptability, and sheer will to thrive demands our respect. Anne Percoco and Ellie Irons take that even further in “Next Epoch Seed Library,” an installation on several shelves that challenges us to see the natural world as a plant might. Species, they remind us, are only considered invasive because they don’t necessarily benefit human beings. But everything that’s planted struggles toward the same sun, and a weed under the proper light is as noble, and maybe even as pretty, as a rose.
Percoco and Irons have crafted ceramic pyramids to protect their seeds, classified them by region and alphabetized them, tucked them into pouches, and slipped them into a tiny card catalogue cabinet. You’re encouraged to sign them out as you would a library book. The place these pods come from sports an unsavory name: Snake Hill in Secaucus. The artists are betting that you can love them anyway, or leave them alone to thrive on their own terms.
A pair of birds from Beth DiCara
Even unhealthy objects get sympathy, and maybe even some dignity, in “Stick Around for Joy.” Karen Leo stubs ceramic cigarettes into the craters of a ceramic moon. The artist has fashioned little red vests for each of them, and wrapped them just below the filter. Through tricks of positioning and paper-cylinder posture, she’s turned her stick-like subjects into a forlorn team of star travelers stranded on a space rock. “Planet Cig” rests on a circular platform strategically placed in front of a mirror. It gives a cosmic dimension to the predicament of the cigarettes, but it doesn’t make the piece feel any less lonely. Rarely does one’s heart go out to a half a pack, but it’s hard to resist Leo’s whimsy.
It isn’t even her oddest piece in the show. “Hans Anatizer” is a receptacle of sorts: a loose cylinder about the size of a can of coffee grounds with big block letters cut out of its glazed ceramic sides. Two floppy tubes connect the inside of the vase (well, it’s a vase of sorts) to a giant blue hand and a head as scrunched and pulverized as a boxing glove. There’s a whiff of claymation to Hans, who looks like he’s just rolled out of a particularly bizarre cartoon. But he isn’t malleable — he’s stuck like that, which may account for his disposition. Leo adds a ceramic cigarette, doubled up like an inchworm in mid-step, to tie “Hans” to “Planet Cig” and reinforce the illusion of elasticity that is part of the sculptor’s magic act.
An odd fellow: Hans Anitizer
Other tricks aren’t quite as dramatic, but they’re every bit as impressive. Abedullah anchors the show with a beautiful centerpiece: a knot of extruded ceramic loops with the visual rhythms of bamboo. “Waight” is all angles, peaks, and terra cotta-streaked cylinders of clay. It looks like the segments will intersect or brush each other, but they never do. The two ends of the tangle don’t meet. Instead, the sculpture is one thick, continuous strand, and the longer the piece is observed, the more it seems to loosen up and let us in. Like so many of the pieces in “Stick Around for Joy,” it’s a vessel, and one defined by its apertures rather than its edges. This bit of radically reimagined pottery can’t hold anything but attention — attention, emotion and spirit. Any seraphim would tell you that that’s more than enough.
(Evening Star Studio will be open in the early afternoon for JC Fridays — that’s 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. on June 6. You can visit by appointment most weekdays, too. Call Beth DiCara directly at 201-388-7323. Should you go at lunchtime, Mordi’s Sandwich Shop is right around the corner.)
Tris McCall regularly writes about visual art (and other topics) for NJArts.net, Jersey City Times, and other independent publications. He's also written for the Newark Star-Ledger, Jersey Beat, the Jersey City Reporter, the Jersey Journal, the Jersey City Independent, Inside Jersey, and New Jersey dot com. He also writes about things that have no relevance to New Jersey. Not today, though.
Eye Level is an online journal dedicated to visual art in Jersey City, New Jersey. A new review will appear every Tuesday morning at 8 a.m., and there'll be intermittent commentaries posted to the site in between those reviews.
Eye Level is made possible by an Andy Warhol Arts Writers Grant.
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