Exhibition Dates: November 3 – 21, 2015
Opening Reception: Thursday November 5, 2015, 6-9pm
Gallery Hours: Tue - Sat 11:30am - 5:30pm
Statement:
San Francisco, CA - This fall, SMAart Gallery will present RAD(ical) FUN(ctions) featuring the work of Nicki Green (San Francisco) and Caitlin Rose Sweet (New York City). Rad(ical) Fun(ctions) is a ceramic based art show that explores the interactions between functional ceramics and queer bodies. Nicki Green and Caitlin Rose Sweet are “too gay to function” and use their queer failure as a starting point to sculpt objects to serve queer bodies, genders, hirstories, and futures. These two artists unhinge the traditional notions of functional ceramics and how clay serves the body by openly acknowledging queer difference and our collective desire for a world that reflects our needs, dreams, and desires. Though these two makers start from similar queries about the construction of social and historical bodies and share a deep love of materiality, their work varies greatly both in form and surface. Combined, Green and Sweet’s pieces express the multifaceted and complicated nature of femme-embodiment and deconstruct the oppressive nature of essentialist gender politics so rampant in normative lgbt communities. The ceramics presented in RAD FUN range from recognizable vessels to abstract sculptural pieces. Green works almost exclusively in referencing blue and white earthenware traditions, while Sweet’s work tends to the looser, brightly colored surfaces and forms. The works in this show seem to contrast each other, but it is this contrast that unites their work in finding ways of creating an intersectional set of politics discussing queer bodies.
