Matt Wedel exhibition

Erskine, Hall & Coe is pleased to host the first exhibition of Matt Wedel’s work in Europe. Wedel is a young American artist whose ceramic sculptures are exceptionally vibrant and colourful, and explore agricultural, botanical and cultural themes.  

The exhibition will feature twenty-five pieces, the majority of which were made specifically for this show.

Born in Palisade, Colorado in 1983, Wedel first began working with clay at the age of two under the guidance of his father, a functional ceramicist, and his passion for making sculpture developed. He studied at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and then at California State University, where he would later teach. Wedel has also taught at several other institutions, including Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in Halifax and the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence.  

The exhibition explores the form of the ‘Flower Tree’ in great depth, of which Wedel has said:

“The flower works seem burdened by their colour. It is a form with peace holding itself with clarity amongst a weight or burden.”

Tony Marsh, ceramic artist and head of the ceramic program at California State University in Long Beach, has noted: “While his botanical forms are related to what we know about plants and flowers, they, like the figural works, are large and fluid with simple but powerfully saturated ceramic color, some as though soaked and dripping with a surreal nectar. But unlike the figuration, many of these floral forms are intensely detailed and suggest that they come from places that we do not know. They are in many respects otherworldly, the powerful products of imagination and desire.”

The Frederick R. Weisman Art Foundation in Los Angeles, the Long Beach Museum of Art and Saint Mary’s University Art Gallery are among the several institutions that have acquired Wedel’s work.

The show is fully illustrated in a catalogue and on our website.