Gareth Mason: A Decade in Cahoots at Jason Jacques Gallery, New York

Gareth Mason: 33 Pots – A Decade in Cahoots at Jason Jacques Gallery, New York
October 1-30, 2020

This spectacular retrospective covers a decade of work by renowned British ceramist Gareth Mason. When art historian and curator Glen Adamson said that just one of Mason’s pots “may contain as many ideas as a whole archaeological pit,“ he was unequivocally correct. Each piece of work by Mason is microcosmic— and cosmic. He is a ceramic artist who celebrates the fact that what happens inside a kiln is a glimpse into deep time, that clay offers us a glimpse into our world, into the geology of our planet— and that, at once, porcelain is just white mud.

Gareth and Jason began working together in 2010 and it’s been a decade to remember.

“Our paths have intertwined,” writes Gareth. “We have used this decade well. Having crowned his achievements in antique ceramics with trail-blazing advocacy of contemporary work, Jason is set to continue surprising, disrupting and delighting the art world’s future appetites. For my part, our short decade’s fruitful collusion (and my thirty-five-year immersion) has far from sated my appetite for the pot. Mud and Fire harbour such bewitchment—so deep is their reach, so tight is their bond—that their under-currents and potentialities are set to agitate my inner workings for the rest of my days.”

Mason, who in recent years has decalred himself a sensualist, takes the world in stride and embodies the yearning, in every human person, to experience Awe with a capital A. More poignantly, his work rewards observation, thought, and understanding. It encapsulates the human ability to feel awe in every experience, from the totally mundane to the absolutely sublime.