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Crusher

By way of July 3. Salon 94, 3 East 89th Avenue, Manhattan (212) 979-0001, .

If ceramics have just lately been getting their owing in the up to date art entire world, that¡¯s partly simply because its practitioners have steadily, rigorously been doing work to upend the arbitrary distinctions in between art and craft. Given that starting her ceramics practice in the 1970s, the Nairobi-born British artist Magdalene A.N. Odundo has created exquisite vessels whose sinuous forms and stately dimensions command space. Produced by hand from English purple clay, they attract as significantly from the traditions of Odundo¡¯s indigenous Kenya and other African cultures as from Greco-Roman, Indian and Chinese strategies of making ceramics.

Whilst the functions of Odundo have been gathered internationally in museums and fetch superior price ranges at auction, this presentation is her initial in New York in approximately 3 a long time it features 10 huge vessels, just about every developed in just the earlier 5 decades, alongside two drawings from her sketchbook. Odundo produces her terra-cotta sculptures by coiling the clay by hand, rather than with a pottery wheel, then immerses the concluded vessels in a colloidal remedy of water and clay just before firing them in the kiln. This thorough process, months in the generating, is evident on the surfaces of the unglazed vessels. Mottled in gradations of onyx and orange in patterns that resemble dyed fabrics, her pieces reward the thorough observer with stunning shifts in colour, sample and element.