Dreamforms
Dreamforms
Ceramic visions of Lauren Ari and Julio del Rio
Exhibition: January 20 – March 19, 2022*
Closing Reception: Sunday, March 13, 12pm-2pm*
Gallery Hours: Thursday-Saturday, 10am-2pm
Location: Richmond Art Center, 2540 Barrett Avenue, Richmond, CA 94804
Dreamforms is a look into the whimsical imaginations of two Richmond-based ceramicists, Lauren Ari and Julio del Rio.
Through a selection of works that include colorful ceramic figures and works on paper, this exhibition explores the intrinsic relationship between the imagined form and the material form.
Both Ari and del Rio approach ceramics as a medium that offers a magical ability to materialize dreams and imaginations into physical realities. Both artists adopt a multidisciplinary approach to their creative process and often take inspiration from their dreams, personal experiences, and imagined realities. Dreamforms highlights the artistic practice that both artists adopt in playing between the ethereal and the corporeal by manifesting visions onto paper and materializing these visions into ceramic forms.
From Julio del Rio’s textured ceramic busts to Lauren Ari’s storied ceramic vessels, Dreamforms opens up a conversation between the imagined and the material.
ALSO SEE: Virtual Exhibition curated by Lauren Ari and Julio del Rio showcasing ceramic art made by NIAD artists. Presented by NIAD Art Center. *coming March 2022*
*Exhibition and reception dates subject to change in response to the Covid-19 pandemic.
About the Artists:
Lauren Ari: Lauren Ari is an artist and educator based in Richmond, California. She holds a Masters in Fine Arts from U.C. Davis after undergraduate study at the Rhode Island School of Design. Her primary focus is on drawing and sculpture. Lauren’s work is in the permanent collections of the Legion of Honor Achenbach Foundation and the De Young Museum. “Lauren Ari’s art roars out of the deepest part of her psyche and arrives with great tenderness into the world. It is fiercely honest, playful and provocative. She speaks directly what is still unfettered in all of us, our wild, free, animal selves.” — Poet Alison Luterman
Julio del Rio: Julio Del Rio is an artist from NIAD in Richmond, CA. He has assembled a small militia of powerful and strange, sometimes humanoid, ceramics figures (frequently seen on paper or canvas as well). Some are based on modern and post-modern sculptures by the likes of Jeff Koons or George Condo. Many of the figures sport a skin etched with text or symbols, creating a connection back in time with the terracotta warriors of ancient China. But, unlike the uniform drabness of the funerary sculptures, Del Rio’s pieces are glazed in bursts of colors.
Image: Lauren Ari, Sleeping with death, 2010, Clay. Courtesy of the Artist
