ARTISTS
Peter Shire: A Survey of Ceramics: 1970s to the Present
Derek Eller Gallery is pleased to announce an exhibition of ceramic works by Peter Shire. Shire rose to prominence as a member of Memphis, the Milan-based design collective which thrived in the 1980s. The gallery will exhibit work from this period, along with teapots, cups, and sculptures dated before and after, in an effort to build a complete narrative of Shire鈥檚 career-long relationship with clay.
Peter Shire has lived in Los Angeles and worked in ceramic for all of his life. The immediacy of clay has provided an outlet for an aesthetic built from particularly Californian influences as disparate and exuberant as hot rod culture (the mechanic Bob Hayes was a childhood neighbor) and Ken Price鈥檚 1969 solo exhibition at Mizuno Gallery which Shire visited in his youth. Along with Price, Post-Pottery artists such as Ron Nagle, John Mason and Peter Volkous helped shape his euphoric, absurd and irreverent relationship to functionality and informed his pluralistic approach to producing art.
While his work borrows from Futurist and Bauhaus design (notably Marianne Brandt鈥檚 seminal silver teapot), the aura of the work is playfully rooted in the garish second and third iterations of Modernism. He recalls frequently passing John Lautner's Googie coffee shop on Sunset Boulevard on his way to the beach as a child. This Mid-Century modern storefront with a large, protruding, striped fin embodied what Shire describes as the 鈥淐alifornia high kitsch鈥� aesthetic, a particular brand of kitsch imitating modernism. That a conventional design (in this instance a roadside cafe) could be radicalized by such ecstatic and boisterous additive process has had a lasting effect on Shire's vision.
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Derek Eller Gallery is pleased to announce an exhibition of ceramic works by Peter Shire. Shire rose to prominence as a member of Memphis, the Milan-based design collective which thrived in the 1980s. The gallery will exhibit work from this period, along with teapots, cups, and sculptures dated before and after, in an effort to build a complete narrative of Shire鈥檚 career-long relationship with clay.
Peter Shire has lived in Los Angeles and worked in ceramic for all of his life. The immediacy of clay has provided an outlet for an aesthetic built from particularly Californian influences as disparate and exuberant as hot rod culture (the mechanic Bob Hayes was a childhood neighbor) and Ken Price鈥檚 1969 solo exhibition at Mizuno Gallery which Shire visited in his youth. Along with Price, Post-Pottery artists such as Ron Nagle, John Mason and Peter Volkous helped shape his euphoric, absurd and irreverent relationship to functionality and informed his pluralistic approach to producing art.
While his work borrows from Futurist and Bauhaus design (notably Marianne Brandt鈥檚 seminal silver teapot), the aura of the work is playfully rooted in the garish second and third iterations of Modernism. He recalls frequently passing John Lautner's Googie coffee shop on Sunset Boulevard on his way to the beach as a child. This Mid-Century modern storefront with a large, protruding, striped fin embodied what Shire describes as the 鈥淐alifornia high kitsch鈥� aesthetic, a particular brand of kitsch imitating modernism. That a conventional design (in this instance a roadside cafe) could be radicalized by such ecstatic and boisterous additive process has had a lasting effect on Shire's vision.
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