What does it mean to dedicate yourself to a medium that you can never fully control? For ceramicist Erin Siena Jobs, that’s exactly the allure.
This summer, Hauser & Wirth Paris presents “New Works,” the artist’s debut solo in Europe and the first-ever Paris presentation by Make, an initiative from the gallery that focuses on artist-makers. By foregrounding craft, the team at Make reminds us that, in a world full of repetition and instantaneous generation, the most compelling objects are still those that cannot be crafted without human hands. The daughter of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs has spent six years of building a ceramic practice on that same premise.
Architect Luis Laplace, who also designed the artist’s studio, conceived of the exhibition, open through July 31, as a journey through an urban forest. It’s a landscape to trek through rather than a gallery in which to stroll idly, prompting the same sense of discovery that thrums through Jobs’ practice. Vessels sit on bespoke plinths and metal pedestals from French artisans while sheets of century-old washi paper hang from the ceiling, each carrying its own texture and historical heft.
The patinas on the works are exactly the point; each bears minor dents, inconsistencies in glazing, the touch of a human. No two pieces can ever formed or glazed in the exact same way, a reality many potters push against as they wrestle for control over their medium. But as Debbie Hillyerd, senior director of learning at Hauser & Wirth, says, Jobs is “undeterred by the unpredictability. If anything, she works with it rather than against it.”
Jobs’ artistic practice is a fitting complement for Make, which engages reverentially with art forms that have been historically disregarded as craft, or furthermore, as women’s work. Rather, Jobs’ studiously constructed pieces will be the subject of a new monograph from Hauser & Wirth, out this fall, that places her bowls, cups, and vessels in the lineage of the gallery’s program. As Hillyerd notes of the work’s singular character, “The vessels hold the alchemy of ceramics, the physicality of making as a creative act.”
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