Peter Olson, Bowls
Peter Olson: Photo Ceramica
| On View: | March 11–August 27, 2017 |
| Opening Reception: | Saturday, March 11, 6–9PM |
| Artist Lecture: | Saturday, March 11, 6:30PM |
| Catalog: | Peter Olson: Photo Ceramica |
Photo Ceramica is the first major exhibition of photographer and ceramicist Peter Olson. Olson’s photographs are printed, repeated, and collaged to encase each ceramic piece. His motifs vary in scale, creating a rhythm as they wrap around and across each artwork. When fired, the prints burn away, leaving permanent, rusty red colored images from the iron oxide in the ink. Olson’s delicately patterned pieces embody fluctuating visual narratives, kaleidoscopes that span centuries and continents.
Peter Olson’s subjects retain a connection to Western art history and religion but hone in on his passion; street photography. These vignettes capture the city streets most familiar to the artist, with their harried workers and “angry strangers,” as he calls them. The artist delights in the challenge of increasingly complex surfaces and nuanced patterning of images. Classical art historical references abound in the artist’s enthusiasm for museums and iconography, spliced with modern people in full motion.
How will historians of future generations view these pots and iconography against similar work of the Greeks? Like the shards of ancient vessels and tiles we study in search of lost knowledge, these contemporary fired ceramics fused with iron oxide do not decompose. In Olson’s work we can imagine our own images represented, wholly or in shards, at a future site, and wonder how we will be remembered.
Based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Olson has traveled the world collecting visual experiences through photography. Olson has spent over 35 years as an accomplished photographer. He earned his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in photography and film at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, PA. He learned how to throw on the wheel at The Clay Studio in Philadelphia five years ago and has been working with clay ever since. Approximately forty ceramic works and photographs will be exhibited.
A catalog with a forward by Garth Clark and an essay by Jo Lauria is available. Click here to order online.