ann/drew gayle: just a moment

Smack Mellon is pleased to present multidisciplinary artist ann/drew gayle’s second solo exhibition in NYC. just a moment comprises gayle’s recent series of flat ceramic sculptures, formed using logics of simple mathematics and patterning techniques employed with Polymer clay. The artist draws from a wide array of inspiration including candy making, M.C. Escher, wallpaper and textile designs, and Conway’s Game of Life–an interactive game based on a mathematical equation that determines cellular automation and the potential for livelihood.

The works’ candy-colored palettes are crafted from porcelain and mason pigments. They appear as fragile slices with intricate patterns, replete with cracks in the surface allowing light to penetrate through. The cracks–understood as unsupported transitions between time and space–are left intentionally by the artist as testimony of their journey. Undergirding the artist’s practice is the scientific principle that the human eye can see only a small sliver of the electromagnetic scale. Like the flat polygonal characters in Edwin Abbott’s Flatland (1884), our consensus reality is primarily constructed by what we can perceive. Formally and materially, gayle draws a parallel between their sculptural practice and the limits of human experience of time and space. They offer us single points in time, solidified into porcelain, as momentary evidence of the larger body from which they were extracted.