Join us at The Mahler Fine Art for the opening of Daniel Johnston’s Large Pot Installation and an artist talk with Daniel Johnston, Thursday September 15th 5:30 -8:00
Free to the public + please RSVP on our Facebook Event Page
Johnston’s site-specific conceptual Installation houses 30 large pottery vessels in a structure evoking a rural shrine, teahouse or the shell of a massive kiln. The plank and board structure allows light to softly illuminate the glaze of the pots while creating shadow and line across the surroundings. The experience is one of beauty, peace and reverence.
The environments I create for the pots are very much about the places we call home, the temporary structures we rest in and that for our own psychological well-being we think of as permanent. We construct buildings – objects, if we are being objective. We call some of them Home, we call some of them Work. We, as humans, fundamentally need the security of the structure to exist. The structures I make have as much to do with this sense of security as with the vulnerability of the actual impermanence of architecture and our own existence. When I built my first house, I realized that at the moment I laid the first board on the foundation blocks, the decaying process had begun. Putting my ceramic vessels in a temporary architectural space is much like placing them in the houses we live in, surrounding the permanence of the human spirit with an ephemeral structure.- Daniel Johnston
ArtGuide Magazine – This September The Mahler Fine Art is proud to present a large pot installation by Daniel Johnston. Johnson’s large pot installations marry the art of pottery with the worldly gratification of senses by creating differing light and composition environments. “After several years spent producing and selling large jars, I challenged myself to make a series of 100 human-scale vessels which I displayed in a single line spanning a quarter mile. Upon completion, I saw the vessels accompanied by multitudes of patrons in a harmonious line with their shadows cast perfectly parallel upon the ground. At that moment I saw the project in a context spanning the distance between the traditional object and the ephemeral experience. It struck me that I had found the place for my work to live conceptually in this culture – as installations.”
Johnson’s site-specific conceptual installation houses his large pots (as many as 30 large vessels) in a structure evoking a rural shrine, teahouse or the shell of a massive kiln. The plank and board structure allows light to softly illuminate the glaze of the pots while creating shadow and line across the surroundings. The experience is one of beauty, peace, and reverence.
Opening Sept 15, with a First Friday Reception on Oct 7, the exhibit runs through Oct 20.
