Malcolm Wright and Beth Ganz open an exhibition of new work on October 20th at the Spheris Gallery in Hanover, New Hampshire. A reception for the artists will be held on Saturday October 27th, from 6-8 p.m. The exhibition runs through December 5th, 2007.

Malcolm Wright’s forms, highly prized by his collectors for their simplicity and inherent elegance, are made from extruded brick clay, unglazed, and left for the kiln fire and ash to leave their mark indelibly in the clay. The gradation of subtle coloration is a wonder, when one understands just how high the heat needs to be in the kiln, and how close each piece might come to utter disaster. All of Wright’s work is fired in his private, hand-built kiln that reaches 21 feet in length. Dug into the hillside of his Vermont property, the twice-a-year firings bring the kiln to life, as 100 sculptural works are soft fired at temperatures close to 2100 degrees Fahrenheit.

Form is paramount in the resulting pieces. Each embodies a compression of conceptual and visual clarity, and each flirts with the juxtaposition of mass and void. Its beauty springs from an innate authority, something that Wright has committed his artistic life to understanding: how to transcend stylistic or intellectual conceits and develop an idea in two directions at once–inside, outside; curve and line; form and suggested function.

In this series of pieces, he succeeds beautifully. The forms all have a strong, spare, minimalist, and structural quality. The geometric shapes activate the space they surround, and the space they occupy. The question of within and without is posed over and over, each time with a decidedly new and enlivening postulate derived from his innovative imagination. Walking around each form, one experiences the changing curve of the shape’s edges, the unexpected dark density of the cutout, the strength of the coupled sides, and the purity of how the geometries are expressed, all of which are complemented by the gradation of ash-driven hues along the sides of each piece.

Wright holds an MFA from George Washington University and apprenticed for two-years with Tarouemon Nakazato the 12th in Karatsu, Japan. Nakazato is honored as a National Living Treasure in Japan, in a lineage of ceramists dating back to the sixteenth century. Wright is also the recipient of the 2003 Walter Cerf Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Arts.

Beth Ganz’s new imagery focuses on the topographies and reliefs of Iceland in both the negative and positive - the photogravures feature volcanic and geothermal sites, including petrified lava flows, inert volcanoes, obsidian lava fields and geothermal steam vents. The addition of hand-painted maps interjects an element of historical exploration, which complements the nineteenth century process of photogravure. The flux between the surface of the image and the photograph’s illusory depth alludes, as well, to landscape paintings’ historical legacy of offering a window into another world.

Ganz’s images are at once supported and disrupted by the play between negative and positive, surface and depth, landscape image and map-like painted detail. The use of the fragile kozo paper in conjunction with the weight and mass of the topographies serves the artist’s intent well; the collaged reverse imagery becomes a finely honed exchange of mirror-image shapes.

Ganz has had several solo exhibitions in New York and elsewhere; her prints have been included in many group shows in the United States, England, Europe, and India since 1989. Her work is well represented in public and private collections including; the Hofstra Museum, Hempstead, NY; New York Historical Society, New York, NY; Library of Congress, Washington, DC; New York Public Library, New York, NY; and U.S. Department of State Art Bank.

Pictured: Malcolm Wright, “Three Figures”, 2006, wood fired brick clay, 13 1/2 x 8 1/2 x 6 3/4 inches. Photograph by John Polak.