EARTH ELEMENTS: PAINT AND FIRE
Curated by Gary Brewer
Wönzimer Gallery 341-B S Avenue 17, Los Angeles, CA 90031
wonzimerinfo@gmail.com | www.wonzimer.com
Opening Reception: Friday, September 4, 2026 | 5:00 PM – 10:00 PM
Exhibition Dates: September 4 – October 9, 2026
LOS ANGELES, CA – Wönzimer is proud to present Earth Elements: Paint and Fire, a group exhibition curated by Gary Brewer. Bringing together a dynamic group of artists, this show explores the intersection of the ceramic medium and contemporary painting.
The Western tradition of ceramics began to free itself from its utilitarian ethos beginning with George Ohr in the early 20th century. In the 1950s, after a residency at Black Mountain College, Peter Voulkos took things further, creating abstract expressionist ceramic sculptures, guided by physicality and improvisational gesture. His work liberated future ceramic artists from long-held traditions of the craft. While Gary Brewer was living in the Bay Area in the 1970s the art world was still immersed in critical arguments trying to uphold some distinction between art and craft. During this time, central to these discussions were artists like Viola Frey and Robert Arneson, who were using the ceramic medium to make powerful works that were irreverent, funny and profound.
These old, worn-out critical battles are for the most part a thing of the past. However, there is still a lingering allegiance to the traditions and rules that shapes the mindset of many ceramic artists. This medium that for so long has been relegated to a utilitarian function is still deeply tied to its history. A beautiful history, but one that can limit the parameters of what is possible.
In the early 20th century, painting was freed from notions of craft, eschewing the need to learn the academic tradition of drawing and depicting our world. Duchamp threw down a philosophical gauntlet with his ready-mades, asserting that art could be whatever one deemed art was, without even the need to make it physically. Later, Jackson Pollock broke through the residual standards for producing painting. Dripping paint onto vast canvases while moving about in a ritualistic, performative way, he opened the floodgates, freeing the tradition of painting from the historical baggage that deterred artists from discovering novel ways to make a statement.
In this exhibition Gary Brewer has put together a group of painters who, after years of working in their chosen medium, began making ceramic sculptures. Their approach and attitude rise from a tabula rasa, without an allegiance to the traditional customs and conventions that have been followed through time. They infuse a painter’s sensibility into this profoundly beautiful medium, with results that are fresh, eccentric and painterly.
Both Galia Linn and Cybele Rowe are exceptions in this exhibition. Linn is an artist who began as a ceramic sculptor but expanded into painting as well. Her experience, in a sense is the reverse, where the physicality of clay imbues painting with a different quality of touch and surface. Cybele Rowe has been creating massive ceramic sculptures for decades but has integrated a deep painterly sensibility to her sculptures. Indeed she refers to her work as volumetric paintings. Her work has a bold emotive force that is charged with a playful wit, and the formal power of expressive abstraction.
Participating Artists:
Elliott Hundley and Jan Krajewski, Cosmas and Damian Brown, David Lloyd, Gary Brewer, Cybele Rowe, Roger Herman, Brad Eberhard, Cheyann Washington, Xu DaRocha, Marco Minaya, Galia Linn, Aaron Sheppard
