CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 2/22/2021

'Shapes From Out of Nowhere' abstract ceramics show opens at The Met

Kathy Butterly's mighty, yet less-than-seven-inch-tall ceramic, "Pony Boy" (2011), is reproduced from Shapes From Out of Nowhere: Ceramics from the Robert A. Ellison Jr. Collection—a new release this week and a surprise staff favorite. Published to accompany the exhibition on view now at The Met Fifth Avenue, this beautifully designed, 272-page volume presents more than 150 works from the esteemed abstract ceramics collection of Robert Ellison—spanning from nineteenth-century visionary George E. Ohr to modern and contemporary masters like Axel Salto, Ken Price, Lynda Benglis and Butterly. "It is indeed extraordinary to see the abundance and variety of contemporary ceramics, and to think that we are now living through one of the greatest periods in the history of this ancient medium," Glenn Adamson writes. "Yet it all started, in a sense, with a gesture of disavowal: a refusal to play by the rules. Out of that single 'no' have come a thousand and more ways to say 'yes.' The title of this book, proposed by Ellison himself, echoes that juxtaposition of negation and affirmation. It suggests an implicit tension between shape—implying a concrete and definitive presence—and nowhere, designating a zone of absence. In the ceramic works of the twentieth century, we can see how empty space was reconceived as a place of discovery. It was there all along, around and inside the vessel. But it took some great potters to make it real."