McKenzie Fine Art has announced an exhibition of new hand-built ceramic sculpture in stoneware, by British-born artist Ursula Morley Price. This will be her fourth solo showing with the gallery. The exhibition opens on Friday, November 22, with a reception for the artist from 6 to 8 p.m., and runs through Sunday, December 22, 2013.
Ursula Morley Price creates her ceramic sculptures using the traditional pinch-and-coil method, commencing with a vessel armature in the form of a bowl, vase, or bottle. The underlying shape is articulated spatially with the artist's signature flanges. These wing-like elements are pinched thin, imparting the illusion of being made of paper, with edges either jagged or smooth. The flanges allow for the lively play of light and shadow across the complex surfaces of the work. In some forms, such as the bottles, the flanges are primarily narrow and straight, with only gentle ripples. In the wider bowl and vase shapes, the flanges are expansive and flare outward. Some ripple and undulate, while others twist gently upwards and diagonally from the base. In some works, the twist and turns are more dramatic and the flanges enter the interior of the form.
As the artist notes, "Almost all my work has been about movement...The wings of the twist sculptures in this exhibition spiral and turn in a completely new way and seem to twist back on themselves as they enter the center of the form."
For this exhibition, Price has returned to creating bottle forms, recalling classical shapes but with bulbous shoulders and very narrow necks. Several of the bottles sit on pedestals and explore shapes the artist likens to the contours of Victorian women's blouses. Price works with monochromatic glazes--pale whites, which in some instances are articulated by a darker glaze on the very edges; rich dark browns, and a silvery green "bronze" color--all possessing a distinctive matte surface texture.
Ursula Morley Price, who resides in southwestern France, has been exhibiting her work internationally since the mid-1970s. Her ceramics are found in numerous public collections such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Museum of Arts and Design in New York; the Musée des Arts Decoratifs in Paris, the Musée National de Céramique in Sèvres, France; and numerous other museums throughout Europe and the United States. In 2013 the Musée d'Art Moderne de Troyes in France mounted a career retrospective exhibition of Ursula Morley Price's sculptures.
Gallery hours are Wednesday through Saturday, 11:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m.; on Sundays the gallery opens at noon. Mondays and Tuesdays are by appointment only. McKenzie Fine Art, Inc. is located at 55 Orchard Street, New York, NY 10002. Call 212-989-5467 or visit
www.mckenziefineart.com for more information.
Artwork: White Twist Form, 2013, stoneware, 7 1/2 inches high, 10 inches diameter
