BARRO BARRIO

Co-curated by Angelik Vizcarrondo-Laboy

Opening Reception: Saturday February 4th, 6 – 9pm
 Exhibition Dates: February 4th – March 4th, 2023

Barro Barrio marks GGLA’s third exhibition at 3407 Verdugo Road, a convening of 25 Los Angeles-based ceramicists, Anabel Juárez, Nicki Green, Alex Anderson, Brittany Mojo, Joshua Miller, Amelia Lockwood, Willy Reed, Lizette Hernandez, Josh Cloud, Karla Ekatherine Canseco, Jane Orr, Ryan Flores, Claudia V. Solórzano, Alex Kerr, Charles Snowden, Kim Kyne, Caroline David, Lauren Elder, Monica Noonan, Jackie Rines, Maddy Inez Leeser, Zachary Maxfield Benson, Chris Miller, Kristen Morgin and Jasmine Little, organized by the gallery and co-curator Angelik Vizcarrondo-Laboy. Spanish for “Clay Neighborhood,” Barro Barrio celebrates LA as the heart of a thriving community of artists engaging with the medium of clay. It recognizes clay as a material with a deep-rooted history in this expansive city that continues to be critical for local artistic production and innovation. While the work presented constitutes a wide range of themes and aesthetics, together, they are suspended in tension between playful abandon and dystopian anxiety, much like LA itself.

LA has long been a town that embraced clay, pushing and expanding our sense of what is possible within this humble medium. With a litany of storied ceramic programs and a long lineage of makers from various disciplines, it is no surprise that the city remains a potent hotbed for making, especially given ceramics’ recent rise to the spotlight as a sculptural conduit. While the pristine finishes and smooth glossy surfaces of the “LA Look” in the 1960s became a trademark for the area, local ceramicists have gone against this aesthetic for decades, creating heavily textured and visceral work. A defining quality that has inevitably continued with the artists of Barro Barrio. Many participating artists also make work that defies the medium’s utilitarian connotations through an irreverent approach to functionality, value, and subject matter by engaging in strategies of absurdity and humor.

Chris Miller, Untitled, of monument, tender head thing, 2023, 21” x 25” x 20”, Various Ceramic Materials inquiries

Caroline David, Organ, 2023, 13” x 7” x 20”, Glazed Stoneware inquiries

Jane Orr, Emergent #2, 2021, 4” x 8” x 5”, Ceramic 1 inquiries

Brittany Mojo, TWO AS ONE, 2022, 16” x 20” 22.5”, Stoneware, Underglaze inquiries

Anabel Juárez, California Poppy II, 2022, 16” x 12” x 4”, Low Fire Ceramic inquiries

Kim Kyne, Untitled (Banana Holder), 2022, 8.5” x 13” x 7”, Glazed Ceramic

Kristen Morgin, Wall Flower, 2014, 16” x 7.25” x 2”, Unfired Clay, Paint, Ink, Crayon, Graphite, and Nails

Josh Cloud, Two As One, One As Two, A Shadow Cast, A Surface Lit, 2022, 15.5” x 15” x 5.5”, Ceramic, Flocking, and Mahogany inquiries

Lauren Elder, Pearl Ashtray, 2022, 24” x 14.5” x 11”, Stoneware, Glaze, and Pearl inquiries

Alex Kerr, Cheesemouse, 2022, 12” x 11” x 6.5”, Ceramic, Lamp Hardware

Monica Noonan, I think of You, 2023, 19” x 12” x 12.5”, Glazed Ceramic inquiries

Willy Reed, Neon Sighn, 2023, 25” x 30” x 9”, Glazed Ceramic inquiries

Jackie Rines, Skirt Vase, 2023, 17” x 10” x 10”, Stoneware, Glaze inquiries

Jasmine Little, Beneath the Trees, 2022, 20” x 16” x 9.5”, Stoneware and Glaze

Ryan Flores, Pitahayas and Pineapples, 2022, 24” x 6.75” x 17.25”, Ceramic inquiries

Joshua Miller, Untitled, 2022, 14” x 15” x 3”, Graphite on Fired Clay inquiries

Amelia Lockwood, compositae a, 2022, 21” x 14” x 18”, Stoneware, Glaze

Charles Snowden, Food, 2023, 18” x 24” x 24”, Ceramic inquiries

Alex Anderson, Candlestick II, 2019, 24.5” x 8.5” x 8.5”, Earthenware, Glaze, Gold Luster inquiries

Maddy Inez Leeser, Orchid Study, 2021, 10” x 7” x 2”, Glazed Ceramic inquiries

Karla Ekatherine Canseco, guías, 2021, 20” x 22” x 20”, Clay, Sequins, Steel, Sugar, Water, and Adobe

Lizette Hernandez, Con Vida, 2023, 8” x 11” x 3”, Raku Fired Ceramic

Nicki Green, Poisonous Mushroom, 2022, 27” x 16” x 25”, Glazed Stoneware inquiries

Claudia V. Solórzano, Rogers St. Gate, 2022, 49” x 32” x 1.5”, Ceramic inquiries

Zachary Maxfiield Benson, Dust Pan, 2023, 13” x 9.5” x 4”, Stoneware

Upon entering GGLA, an array of objects set atop plinths, shelves, pedestals, and the gallery floor welcomes guests. The display echoes the exhibition’s great diversity in approach and making styles. The left wall of the main room radiates with a sunshine yellow, provoking dialogue with one of the first objects in Barro Barrio. A thickly layered and pockmarked Christopher Miller sculpture that resembles the disembodied and corroded head of Winnie the Pooh—a sickly yellow-green uneven surface revealing a structure beneath the seemingly disintegrating facade. The scale of works is similarly wide-ranging. At the larger end of the spectrum are pieces by Brittany Mojo and Willy Reed. Mojo’s funky black and white checkered-patterned vessel with twin openings and two balls sitting on top sits only feet away from Reed’s pink to white lava glaze encrusted grid-like frame emerging from an oxidized copper green sculpted rock base.

On a shelf in the gallery’s second room is the smallest work of the show, a peachy-colored whimsical vessel resembling a figure with four ornate curling handles by Maddy Inez Leeser. Nearby hangs a sculpture by Claudia V. Solórzano, a spindly ceramic gate framing a painted wall section that evokes one of the city’s famed sunsets. This tableau is a fitting signifier for the exhibition’s common denominator: clay in LA. The precarious threshold references the copious wrought iron gates found throughout LA—a means of protection and a recurring element of the vernacular architecture inextricably linked to the built urban landscape.

While this exhibition demonstrates that LA’s thriving ceramic scene is pulsing with energy, it is only a glimpse at the expansive network of artists working with clay locally. Abstract and figurative, large and small, functional and sculptural, co-exist to create an ecosystem within GGLA’s walls that reflect the richness of LA cultural production. Barro Barrio is a celebration of here and now.