Another reinterpretation of an original comes from YehRim Lee. The daughter of renowned ceramicist parents, Lee is making a name for herself in the realm too. Wearstler incorporated one of Lee’s side tables into a project, and for the Gallery, encouraged her to reimagine the raw terracotta, drippy glazed piece as a tall drinking table. “It’s the first time she took a table up to this height before,” says Yon of the Korean-born Joshua Tree–based artist.
Following her Third Nature collection of furniture and objects for the Kelly Wearstler Gallery earlier this year, Hagit Pincovici is back with a trifecta of Growing lamps, of which previous editions have appeared in Wearstler projects. These statuesque creations finished in Carrara-like Bianca Gioia, porous titanium travertine, and veined, natural blush Rosso Cristallo Italian marble are a departure from Pincovici’s previous cast-bronze works. This indicates, Yon says, how “there isn’t necessarily a limit to the medium with which we’ll collaborate with an artist.”
A slew of striking new decorative accents bring additional fodder to the collectible furniture. Detroit sculptor Ebitenyefa Baralaye, for example, conjures the African Baobab tree in his duo of subtly textured 27-inch terracotta vessels dressed in chevron motifs. “Not a ton of ceramicists do beautiful patterning so the ribbing with the hand-painted design is so nice,” Wearstler says. The intriguing silhouettes continue with contemporary Nashville artist Amelia Briggs’s bulbously blobby latex-and-oil mirrors that are as functional as they are whimsical. Handmade with recycled and reclaimed components, the sculptural pieces are available in burnished gold, metallic blue, and black finishes and are “great for powder rooms and entries,” Wearstler adds.
Wearstler first encountered the velvet canvas works of Lior Modan, an Israeli artist based in Brooklyn, in an LA gallery. “I was so intrigued by his process. There is quite a bit of relief to them,” she says. The nuanced, hand-dyed compressed velvets for the Gallery are framed in resin-cast belt buckles and explore Modan’s “infatuation with Los Angeles and sunny California,” as Wearstler puts it. Fellow Brooklyn-based artist Sticky is debuting a series of amber-hued, ball-bedecked glassware buoyed by a touch of gold relief in a collaboration exemplifying another of the Gallery’s missions: “offering accessible pieces that are handcrafted by smaller, emerging artists,” Wearstler says.
Although all the gallery newcomers are presented individually and have their own “voices and shapes, they work together so well,” she adds “They come together to tell a story.”