Cool Clay

Brian Rochefort | Crocker Art Museum

July 21, 2019 — July 19, 2020

From raw textures to meticulous details, to glazes bursting with color, the works in Cool Clay represent one of the most exciting and expansive fields of contemporary art. This exhibition highlights a selection of notable acquisitions that strengthen the Crocker Art Museum’s ceramics holdings in both diversity and scope, the majority by artists not previously represented in the permanent collection. These include influential figures like Rudy Autio, Jun Kaneko, Edwin Scheier, and Akio Takamori, as well as more recent leaders like Zemer Peled, Brian Rochefort, and Dirk Staschke. Although the artists pursue a great variety of approaches and techniques, each embraces the experimental and playful sensibility this versatile medium engenders. Spanning six decades of studio practice, this exhibition celebrates the ground-breaking achievements of 20th-century ceramists as well as those who today continue to reimagine the possibilities of working in clay.

Link to exhibition.

Bloom Projects: Brian Rochefort

Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara

August 1, 2019 - September 8, 2019

Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara (MCASB) is pleased to announce the first solo institutional exhibition of Los Angeles, California-based artist Brian Rochefort. As part of MCASB’s Bloom Projects series Rochefort will exhibit new works as an extension of the ongoing body of work Craters. Building ceramic vessels reminiscent of geological formations in Belize, Tanzania, Nicaragua, and the Galapagos Islands, Rochefort has developed the Craters series over the last three years in response to his extensive travels to remote locations throughout South and Central America, and East Africa. What began as a fascination with volcanoes and craters, such as Sierra Negra Crater in Ecuador, live volcanoes in Nicaragua, and Ngorongoro Crater in Tanzania, has shifted to interests in protected barrier reefs and tropical cloud forests, amongst other physical phenomena.

This exhibition is curated by Alexandra Terry, Associate Curator.

Link to exhibition.