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Arlene Shechet in "Secrets"
Arlene Shechet is curious about the obscured origins of industrial objects, folding clues about production processes into her handcrafted ceramic sculptures. With their hollow interiors often hidden from view, Shechet’s sturdy clay vessels disguise their true nature through dazzling surface effects and the illusion of solidity.
For her exhibition Meissen Recast at the RISD Museum in Providence, Shechet juxtaposes her reproductions of original Meissen factory molds made during a residency at the Meissen Manufactory in Germany next to the original Meissen porcelain dating back to the 18th century, revealing the usually hidden industrial roots of those objects.
More information and creditsCredits
Series Created By: Susan Dowling & Susan Sollins. Executive Producer & Curator: Susan Sollins. Series Producer: Eve Moros Ortega. Associate Curator: Wesley Miller. Director of Production: Nick Ravich. Field Producer: Ian Forster. Editor: Mark Sutton. Director of Photography: Jarred Alterman, Justin Thomas Ostensen, & Joel Shapiro. Additional Photography: Marc Levy, Murat Otunc, Kyle Stryker, & Wilson Waggoner. Sound: Mert Aksuna, Michael Carmona, Neal Doxsee, Marcus Goudge, John McKallip, Roger Phenix, & John Zecca. Assistant Camera: Gillen Burch, Chris Jones, John Marton, & Irwin Seow.
Art Direction & Design: Open, New York. Online Editor: Don Wyllie. Composer: Peter Foley. Voiceover Artist: Jace Alexander, Dale Soules, & Joe Urla. Sound Mix: Cory Melious. Sound Edit: Matt Snedecor. Graphics Animation: CRUX Design. Artwork Animation: Stephanie Andreou. Assistant Editor: Carla Naranjo, Danny Rivera, Leana Siochi, Elizabeth J. Theis, & Bahron Thomas.
Artworks Courtesy of: Elliott Hundley; Trevor Paglen; Arlene Shechet; Andrea Rosen Gallery, New York; Metro Pictures, New York; Regen Projects, Los Angeles; & Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York. Archival Footage & Photography: HIP/Art Resource, New York; MIT Museum; Ron Muller; & NASA.
Special Thanks: The Art21 Board of Trustees; Greg Allen; Anne Anka; David Berezin; Scott Briscoe; Allison Card; Russell Corona; Michaela Daly; Deborah Diemente; Framerunner; Heard City; Evan McQuaid Bedford; Jenna Miller Gratigny; Andrew Molleur; Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Providence; Pat Casteel Transcripts; Protocinema; Isidoro Quezada-Ramirez; Katie Rashid; Riley Robinson; Mari Spirito; & Valero Services, Inc.
Additional Art21 Staff: Cristiana Baik, Nicole J. Caruth, KC Forcier, Joe Fusaro, Jessica Hamlin, Jonathan Munar, Alexis Patterson, Heather Reyes, Diane Vivona, & Nechama Winston.
Public Relations: CaraMar Publicity. Station Relations: De Shields Associates, Inc. Legal Counsel: Albert Gottesman.
In Memoriam: Susan Sollins, visionary creator of Art21 and Art in the Twenty-First Century.
Major underwriting for Season 7 of Art in the Twenty-First Century is provided by National Endowment for the Arts, PBS, Agnes Gund, Bloomberg, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation, The Robert Sterling Clark Foundation, The Anna-Maria and Stephen Kellen Foundation, Toby Devan Lewis, and Sikkema Jenkins & Co.
Closed captionsAvailable in English, German, Romanian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Italian
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Arlene Shechet employs an experimental approach to ceramic sculpture—she tests the limits of gravity, color, and texture by pushing against the boundary of classical techniques, sometimes fusing her kiln-fired creations with complex plinths formed of wood, steel, and concrete. Variously sensual, humorous, and elegant, her clay-based vessels evoke the tension between control and chaos, beauty and ugliness, perfection and imperfection. Considering herself an installation artist who happens to make objects, Shechet focuses intently on ensuring that the display, sight lines, and relationships of the objects in her exhibitions change with every view while maintaining formal equilibrium.
“Because it has no character, I can make anything. It’s just there to be invented.”
Arlene Shechet on clay
Artist at Work
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