Large geometric sculpture composed of angular, faceted planes in shades of gray and black, positioned on a concrete floor against a white wall. The form creates a complex, crystalline volume with sharp edges and overlapping surfaces that suggest both architectural and organic qualities.

Architecture of Touch

Andy Brayman, Sanam Emami, Del Harrow

3/20/2015 – 5/2/2015

Press Release (PDF)

The work of Sanam Emami, Andy Brayman, and Del Harrow explores themes of function and design, volume, containment, furniture, and the body, but always with a particular sensitivity to nuances of repetition and variation in line, form and mark.

In his essay “The Workmanship of Certainty and the Workmanship of Risk” from The Nature and Art of Workmanship, David Pye presents the relationship between making with tools and making by hand not as binary activities but as fluid continuum – a back and forth - that informs and influences the other. Pye argues for the persistence of handmade things through the innate human response to particular kinds of variation - like the subtle variation in form found in nature.

The artists in this show explore the nuance of repetition and variation in made things. While each artist works in several materials, their practices are grounded in the use of clay, the material that most directly records the mark of both tools and hands. Sometimes made directly through the manipulation of clay with the hand, each also incorporates a range of tooling and processes. While this variation is not always a direct product of the hand - sometimes emerging from a computer controlled machine, a decal, or the phenomena of a glaze - the particular sensitivity always points back to the proximity and structure of a thinking hand, revealing an architecture of touch.
 

Exhibition Images ()

  • A large-scale sculptural installation featuring white glazed ceramic forms stacked vertically within and around a wooden frame structure. Organic, tubular shapes in varying sizes are balanced on and extending from a wooden platform, with an angular geometric form mounted at the top, creating an abstract composition that explores the relationship between containment, form, and the human scale.
  • Gallery installation featuring three white metal tables with slatted surfaces arranged in receding perspective on a dark floor. An organic orange sculptural form sits on the nearest table, a geometric green polyhedron on the middle table, and a white shelving unit displaying various ceramic vessels stands in the background.
  • Large-scale geometric sculptural form composed of faceted planes in shades of gray and white dominates the right side of a minimalist gallery space. On the left, a white metal frame table with an orange rounded vessel sits beside a white shelving unit and a green cylindrical object, creating a spare compositional arrangement across the polished concrete floor.
Large geometric sculpture composed of angular, faceted planes in shades of gray and black, positioned on a concrete floor against a white wall. The form creates a complex, crystalline volume with sharp edges and overlapping surfaces that suggest both architectural and organic qualities.