Friedman Benda is pleased to announce Adam Silverman’s first solo exhibition in New York. For Ground Control, Silverman presents an entirely new and substantial body of work, including a site-specific installation that demonstrates the universe of forms and surfaces that he has created in his 14-year practice. A catalogue with contributions by Nader Tehrani and Brooke Hodge will accompany the exhibition.
The Los Angeles-based artist has explored different means of creation in architecture and fashion before focusing on clay. This path is evident in Ground Control. In each medium Silverman engages the human body as reference, subject and tool.
The wheel throwing process is an essential part of Silverman’s practice. His forms are strong and deliberate. They command attention whether they are egg shaped with delicately smooth walls or asymmetrical and aggressively punched or punctured. His glazing and throwing practices are rooted in precision and tradition, while embracing experimentation, improvisation and chance. Treating his pots and sculptures like three-dimensional canvases with elaborate glazing techniques, every piece represents both a fresh start and a moment on a continuum.
From 2008 to 2010 Silverman collaborated with Nader Tehrani on “Boolean Valley”, a conceptual, installation piece that traveled from the San Jose Museum of Art to MOCA Los Angeles, to the Nasher Sculpture Center, in which they made a cone-shaped form on the wheel, slip cast it 200 times, then cut each cone horizontally in two and laid out the resulting 400 pieces as a complicated, topographic, landscape installation that responded to each of the architectural spaces within which is was installed.
In 2013 Silverman had a major museum show at The Laguna Art Museum in Laguna Beach California. The show was part retrospective and part newly commissioned installation pieces, including two video collaborations. Also in 2013 an artists monograph; Adam Silverman Ceramics was published by Skira Rizzoli.
ABOUT ADAM SILVERMAN
Known for his sculptural vessels and richly textured glazes, Adam Silverman is among the most dynamic practitioners dedicated to ceramics today. Silverman brings an architect’s sense of structure to his objects and utilizes personal and sophisticated techniques to glaze and fire his works.
Silverman was born in 1963 in New York, NY and received a Bachelor of Fine Art and a Bachelor of Architecture from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1987 and 1988. He served as the Los Angeles studio director of Heath Ceramics for five years between 2009 and 2014.
In 2008, he collaborated with architect Nader Tehrani and conceived Boolean Valley, an installation comprised of 400 clay objects with various versions at MOCA Pacific Design Center, Los Angeles, CA, Montalvo Arts Center, Saratoga, CA, Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas, TX, and San Jose Museum of Art, San Jose, CA. In late 2019, the artist started Common Ground, an ongoing project in which he brings together clay, water, and wood ash from each of the 56 states and territories of the US. By mixing these materials together, he erases the arbitrary borders of statehood, to create a single new material which will be used to make the project. Common Ground reflects on the divisiveness of the current state of the country, while also celebrating the commonality and universality of the shared American experience.
Silverman’s work is included in the permanent collections of the Israel Museum, Jerusalem; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, CA; Museum of Contemporary Craft, Portland, OR; Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas, TX; Palm Springs Art Museum, CA; Rhode Island School of Design Museum, Providence, RI; and the Yale Art Gallery, New Haven, CT. He lives and works in Los Angeles, CA.
