Portal

Press Release

Opening reception Thursday, May 12 5-7 PM

Nicelle Beauchene is pleased to present Portal, a project space exhibition by Bruce M. Sherman.

Portal assembles Sherman’s most recent ceramic works in which themes of spirituality, nature, and one’s sense of self are expressed in surrealist, sculptural reliefs. Nodding to the flat planes of canvas painting, these intimate forms take the shape of baroque lancet windows, arabesque archways, and picture frames. Through these portals Sherman renders richly colored landscapes, windows that provide views of abstracted, playful figures and personified trees.

Exploring the painterly qualities of glaze, Sherman has recently expanded the textural possibilities of his ceramics through layers of gestural glazing overtop areas of high and low relief, taking aesthetic cues from Japanese watercolor paintings and manuscript illustrations. In four of the works on view, Sherman repeats a similar compositional schema: a sky with clouds or a sun fills the upper register of the tablet, and a landscape—mountains, trees, or a city—fills the foreground.

These portals, each a window with a view, mirror Sherman’s own search for connection with the natural world and realms of expanded perceptual possibility. They offer moments of calm, playfulness, and curiosity as the viewer’s gaze wanders through different textures and shapes, discovering an eye embedded in the earth, a pink tree emerging from a dark blue sky, or a sun showering its rays over skyscrapers.

Bruce M. Sherman lives and works in New York. He has held solo exhibitions at Nicelle Beauchene Gallery, New York; White Columns, New York; South Willard, Los Angeles; Kaufmann Repetto, Milan; and Sorry We’re Closed, Brussels (two person). Sherman has been included in group exhibitions at theAldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, CT; The Power Station, Dallas, TX; Marianne Boesky Gallery, Brennan and Griffin, Front Desk Apparatus, and Regina Rex, New York, NY; South Etna, Montauk; Cooper Cole, Toronto, ON; Adams and Ollman, Portland, OR; Museo Regional Michoacano, Morelia, Mexico; Thomas Duncan Gallery and The Pit, Los Angeles, CA; among others.

Sherman will be included in a group exhibition at Thomas Brambilla, Bergamo, Italy this June.