Arlene Shechet with Raymond Foye

Arlene Shechet employs an experimental approach to ceramic sculpture by testing the limits of gravity, color, and texture and pushing the boundary of classic techniques, sometimes fusing her kiln-fired creations with complex plinths formed of wood, steel, and concrete. By incorporating casts of firebricks and porcelain slip molds into her sculptures, she reflects on and investigates the tradition of decorative arts. Variously sensual, humorous, and elegant, her clay-based vessels evoke the tension between control and chaos, beauty and ugliness, perfection and imperfection. Shechet focuses on ensuring that the display, sight lines, and relationships of the objects in her exhibitions change with every view while maintaining formal equilibrium.

Raymond Foye is a writer, curator, editor, and publisher, and is a Consulting Editor of the Brooklyn Rail. He has worked for City Lights Books, New Directions, Petersburg Press, and with Francesco Clemente was the publisher of Hanuman Books from 1986-1995. From 1990-95 he worked as director of exhibitions and publications at Gagosian Gallery in New York. His recent projects include The Collected Poems of Bob Kaufman (co-edited with Tate Swindell) for New Directions (2019). He organized the first exhibition of the works of legendary underground filmmaker and painter Jordan Belson for Matthew Marks Gallery in 2019, and is working on a comprehensive monograph on Belson’s work. Currently he is preparing an edition of Gregory Corso’s last poems (1980-2000) for New Directions, and the Collected Poems of Rene Ricard, to be published in 2020.