Roger Herman. Ceramics

About

Herman’s ceramics continually shift between abstraction and figuration, pair vivid palettes with dark colors and shiny bright surfaces with matte earthy tones. This range of technique is held together by a gestural rawness and vibrancy that is inherent to each sculpture: drips of paint run down the exteriors of the hefty vessels and bowls with occasional window-like holes, sharply cut open.

Herman’s imagery reads like an archeology of styles; it is equally drawn from pop culture and a variety of art historical tropes: mangas, erotica, surrealism or Paleolithic cave paintings. Like an exquisite corpse, the only prevailing constant is the randomness of choice, the embrace of chance with an inexhaustible curiosity for the renewing nature of the painting process in itself.

Among the variety of imageries, the human body is pervasive throughout Herman’s sculptural work, whether it’s the recurring vanitas motif of the skull, the bodily shape of the vessel, or painted faces with protruding noses or ears. Haptic and sensual, their immanent physicality also reflects the corporeal act of painting and building up the clay. The painted figures and faces call to mind ancient cave paintings and just like them, they leave their mark and emphasize the presence in its vivid materiality.