Winter 2026

ABSENCE TAKES FORM

Curated by Adrienne Spinozzi in partnership with NCECA

January 31 – April 4, 2026
RECEPTION: Saturday, Jan. 31st, 5-8pm

In partnership with the National Council on Education for Ceramic Arts (NCECA), Wasserman Projects is proud to present Absence Takes Form. Curator Adrienne Spinozzi, Associate Curator in the American Wing at the Metropolitan Museum writes:

“Absence Takes Form explores how artists express their individual diasporic journeys in clay, taking its inspiration from Detroit, a place with a rich history shaped by the Great Migration. All diaspora and migrations are complex negotiations between gain and loss, defined by displacement, memory, and promise. These formative life experiences can offer fertile inspiration to artists, and the works in this exhibition give voice and physical space to ancestral memories by turning absence into a three-dimensional form. This reparative work is expressed in myriad ways, including acknowledging a life lived, embracing visual signifiers of one’s identity, honoring and preserving cultural techniques and traditions, and engaging in a conceptual practice that reconstructs the past anew. In this exhibition, artists engage in the act of processing their memory of an ancestral homeland through creation. Absence takes form.”

About the Curator: Adrienne Spinozzi is an Associate Curator in the American Wing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where she is responsible for the American redware, stoneware, and art pottery collections. Her recent projects include Shapes from Out of Nowhere: Ceramics from the Robert A. Ellison Jr. Collection (2021), an exhibition of 20th and 21st-century abstract and nonrepresentational ceramics, and Hear Me Now: The Black Potters of Old Edgefield, South Carolina (2022-24), an exhibition on the contributions of the enslaved potters—both known and unknown—in western South Carolina during the 19th century. She is currently working on a reinstallation of American ceramics that will span the late 19th century through today.

Invited Artists: Adebunmi Gbadebo, David R. MacDonald, Anina Major, Ibrahim Said, Yeesookyung
Juried Artists: Ivan Albreht, Natalia Arbelaez, Lisa Marie Barber, Malene Djenaba Barnett, Ron Baron, Yael Braha, Pattie Chalmers, Jonathan Christensen Caballero, Kaneez Zehra Hassan, Hongmi Kim Hoog, Quinn Alexandria Hunter, Roxanne Jackson, Tim Keenan, Wansoo Kim, Robert King, Josephine Larsen, Jae Won Lee, Kimberly LaVonne, Mahalexmi Mohan, Steven Montgomery, Janet Neuwalder, Joy Okokon, Ross Junior Owusu, Kyungmin Park, Yana Payusova, Tia Santana, Paul Scott, Stephanie Shih, Ellie Stanislav, Silvia Tagusagawa, Hirotsune Tashima, Iren Tete, Kwok-Pong (Bobby) Tso, Karina Yanes, Ari Zuaro

In conversation, Sculpted Garden features a rich texture-filled pairing between Matt Wedel and SUBSTUDIO, on view in Wasserman Works. Lexington-based design firm SUBSTUDIO uses color, patterns, and undulating custom rugs to physically and visually softens the architecture. Carefully curated vases and flower sculptures from Matt Wedel reintroduces structure, with playful soft colors and intentional gestures throughout his pieces.