Jonathan Kaplan at Plinth and Ice Cube

Suppose you are cleaning junk out of the garage. A broken adjustable office chair, an outdated globe, a nerf football, an old ceiling light dome without its fixture, an old clutch plate, some plastic donuts that your kid used to stack on pegs, a bell without a clapper, that old singing trout your buddies gave you, some stylized plastic birds and fish the cats used to play with--you put it all in the trash bag, right?  Not Jonathan Kaplan.  He saves junk like that.  He saves anything that catches his eye for geometry or  texture or kitsch.  He makes molds out of cast away objects and throws them on a shelf where they accumulate until that certain day when he's mulling over ideas for new ceramic pieces.  Then he lets his  whimsicality take over, stacking unlike shapes and textures into potential ceramic objects of various kinds and uses.  His whimsicality is informed by a lifetime's study of the history of his ancient art and the cultures that used it to create everything from everyday useful items like pots to expressions of their deepest fears, hopes and beliefs. 

Jonathan's latest show, "Modern Moche," at his Plinth Gallery (plus some pieces at the current Icebreaker 2.0 show at Ice Cube Gallery) displays the witty beauty that can arise when he combines  cast-off modern artifacts with ancient ceramic traditions such as the art of the Moche culture that flourished in Peru almost two thousand years ago.  Peruvian pottery often employs human and animal forms, often displays an amusing erotic playfulness, and, among the Moche, usually includes a distinctive "stirrup spout" that serves both as a spout and handle.

Jonathan's references to this tradition are clear in his latest vesselsHere, a plastic donut has become the stirrup, a corrugated tube from a broken office chair has become the spout and both sit atop conjoined birds, which sit atop a halved child's globe.  Or,  below, the stirrup spout sits on top of a kitschy fish, which sits on top of a nerfball.

Besides stirring some admiration for Jonathan's capacity to assemble unlike artifacts into entirely new and useful larger objects, these references to an ancient culture's pottery raise some interesting questions.  Do the animals used in Jonathan's pottery "mean" what animal representations in Moche culture mean?  Fish and birds have held multiple symbolic meanings for many cultures for thousands of years.  What do the thrown away, sentimentalized, mass produced animal images Jonathan used to create his vessels "mean" to us beyond, perhaps, "commodity?"  Would we place Jonathan's vessels in the tombs of our loved ones, as the Moche did with theirs?  Can bad taste (the fish, for instance) be redeemed when it is re-purposed, re-contextualized and translated into another medium?  Do the aesthetics of modern assembled art objects (whether Jonathan's or Rauschenberg's) rise to the level of the wit that animates them?  

The aesthetics of Jonathan's vessels are generated not only by their exotic and ingenious combinations of modeled forms, but also by their luscious, multi-layered glazing.  You see these from across the room and without knowing how they were made or what they are referencing or even how they're used, you want them for what they do to the light on and around them.  Alternately creamy or shiny or flat or all three, these ceramics are like cats, who always know where to be.  Take one home and I'm certain it will lead you to its perfect spot.

Rex Brown
Pattern Shop Studio