By Cammy Climaco
By the time Covid protocols were over in 2021, Ceramics was at its height of popularity. More and more fine artists were using it as a medium, Instagram had created a community of ceramics gazing, and Seth Rogan built a home studio. When the Clay Pop show, curated by Alia Dahl (née Williams), opened at Jeffrey Deitch it was right on time. It was a big deal; the unimaginable happened to ceramics, a material vilified for decades as being too “craft,” now a giant group show at Jeffrey Deitch. Dahl had put together a show of some of the best ceramicists in the country. Many had that California Davis Funk feeling: humor, pop culture as subject matter, cartoon characters out of context. Personally, the Magdalena Suarez Frimkess, Genesis Belanger, and Sharif Farrag pieces stood out.
Since that show, I’ve become a big fan of Farrag’s work. From Clay Pop, it makes total sense for Farrag to have a solo show at Deitch. It’s the gallery which understands and celebrates the confluence of culture: street art, fashion, and New Yorky underground stuff, while, concurrently, being dead serious about art.
When I went to the gallery, I thought I was going to run in, see this show, then go live my life. However, once inside, I immediately learned it wasn’t going to happen. I literally had to slow down my New Yorker brain. The show is a mix of vessels and sculptures with surfaces absolutely covered in content, horror vacui covered. Once in, piece by piece, I got totally swept up in the complexity and wow factor of the work. Looking at each piece became almost addictive. If you skim this work, you’ll miss the whole experience.
There’s a Mies Van Der Rohe saying, “God is in the details,” which is used in art all the time. What’s seductive about Farrag’s pieces is his approach to multi-layering surface and content. Each piece is a 360-degree world with levels of information, and it goes deep. Farrag himself is multi-dimensional: Egyptian, Syrian, American, and Californian. He talks about the physical, spiritual, and political worlds, often in the same piece. A vessel could be about American Egyptomania, the underworld of gods and demons, animals in nature, love, mental and physical health, sunshine, skateboarding, stress or traffic.
In this show, New York City is often a character in the work. There’s a triptych of wall tiles, “Bridge,” where a multilayered figure in the center tile holds a snake in each hand. Inside the snakes are human figures trying to get out. How did they even get in there? Each snake points to either the darkness of the city or the lightness of Los Angeles. As a long-time resident of NYC coming out of winter, I’m right there in the sunlight, drunk on Vitamin D.
Often, the Faberge Egg is used as a reference point; the egg pieces are covered in traditional ceramic and Faberge decorative elements and contain narratives. In “City Egg,” for example, New York City is shown dark and grimy at the base of the piece, complete with double-decker tourist bus, billboards, and Chrysler Building. In the transition from the bottom to the top of the piece stands a glorious brown-skinned Statue of Liberty who seamlessly transitions us into the top half. There, the tone changes into lightness and brightness. There’s the egg, sitting atop the city surrounded by palm trees, birds and monkeys, until the very top, a rooster possibly signifying a new reality. It really feels like a hopeful message.
I wanted to get a little more insight into the show, so I asked Sharif if he would answer some questions about the work.
Cammi: Sharif, so great to meet you! I’ve been a big fan of your work since the Clay Pop show back in 2021. I went to see your show at Jeffrey Deitch on Saturday and was blown away with the layers of content and detail in each piece. It was like, surface, other surface, possible other surface, structure, and interior space. They felt like they were giving a sense of world-building and video gaming with a cataclysm of personal and material histories. Alia Dahl said you had made this work specifically for this show. How did you approach the concept of a solo show at Jeffrey Deitch?
Sharif: Thank you, Cammi.
I’ve always been apprehensive about a clear concept for an exhibition, and sort of work piece to piece. Most importantly, I want my art to be a reaction to what I’m experiencing in life, so I try to stay nimble. The exhibition contains big parts of my life and lots of contemplation on commitment. I got married while starting the first piece of the show, “love complicated jug”, and the 2025 LA fires were happening while I finished the last piece, “city egg”. I just built a personal ceramic studio in 2023 after grad school at UCLA, and this is my first exhibition working in my own studio. This work is me freefalling off a cliff after making some big life decisions. I did have the thought when starting that I wanted to lean into intricacy, color, and trying to make narrative sculptures.
Oh, I totally can see that. The pieces do feel very personal and have a generosity of emotion. I love ceramic work that feels like the artist is trying to talk to you personally or share some universality with you. Like, when I see a piece and think, this person has some demons, been there. One of my favorite pieces from the show was “Bridge,” which is a wall piece that travels from New York to Los Angeles. I have always wondered what my life would have been like if I had moved to LA instead of NYC after grad school, and this piece reminds me of that. There are several pieces in the show where NYC and NYC culture is a character for better or worse. Or both?
Honestly, I have made some of my best friends and learned so much about art while visiting NYC. Growing up in LA and first visiting NYC blew my mind. When making this work, I felt in awe of the city and wanted to include that. Also I never really made buildings, or bridges as decoration.. mostly naturalistic plants and figurative things. It was a new prompt to try and make a different setting. In “the bridge” I couldn’t stop thinking of that song “JFK to LAX” by gangstarr.
There was a lot of exquisite object obsession happening in your pieces, things that exist but are in museums, private collections or are unaffordable. I’m thinking about the Faberge Eggs and the guard dog sculpture (Biso). I’m fascinated with ceramics’ ever-changing role in history. Can you talk about what draws you to specific ceramics and your influences? Do you also love Bernard Pallasy?
When I first started making ceramics, there was a Jeffry Mitchell sculpture left in the studio at USC. I was obsessed with it, and he greatly influenced my work right from the beginning. Lots of my references come from my memories, and I love to meander around different books, search on eBay, and look through museum archives online. Clay is so malleable, and glazes are so versatile that there is a plethora of material in the world to pull from. Bernard Pallasy is cool; I discovered his work at the MET with that exquisite lobster plate. The MET is one of the best places to search for ideas and artists from the past. Old things can change meaning when remade in 2025.
I like making Faberge Eggs because I sort of think they were my introduction to my “object obsession”. I have memories as a young kid playing with my mom’s tchotchkes and jewelry, and her cheap Faberge egg replicas were insanely valuable in my fantasy world. I knew nothing about Imperial Russia, but I was drawn to their intricacy and gaudiness. This was the late 90s/early 2000s; gaudiness was everywhere in pop culture and art. Also, some of the only books in my childhood home were my mom’s Cartier, Lalique, LLadro, and Faberge books. I still look through those books to find nostalgic references and look for images of objects that speak to me.
Seeing how things change when I make them out of clay is fascinating, from cars to Faberge Eggs to Ancient sculptures. I can be whimsical and expressive. It’s like pretending as a kid; I take these references, remake them, and add them to the world I’m building in my art.
The show comes with a printed glossary, as a way to deep dive and decode some of the concepts in the work. In it, you talk about the “third culture kid” and the “fourth dimension kid.” Your father is Egyptian, and your mother is Syrian; you’re also Californian. What does “fourth dimension kid” mean? And are there only four?
Shoot… fourth dimension kid. I thought it was a kinda corny name like karate kid, but basically, I read the ideas of third-culture kid and jumped off that. The 4th dimension is hypothetical, but could be considered as time. In my life, the consideration of someone’s interests and subcultures is as important as heritage and nationality. The whole glossary is filled with half-baked ideas; I’m sure there are more than 4.
Cammi Climaco is a ceramicist and multidisciplinary artist based in Queens, New York, with a studio practice in Brooklyn. She earned her BFA in Crafts from Kent State University and an MFA in Ceramics from Cranbrook Academy of Art. Cammi has taught at institutions such as Pratt Institute, 92Y, BKLYN CLAY, and Greenwich House Pottery. In addition to her teaching and studio work, she co-hosted The Ceramics Podcast and now hosts The Ceramics Companion, where she talks about ceramics.
Sharif Farrag: Hybrid Moments is on view at Jeffrey Deitch, New York, between March 8 and April 19, 2025.
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Captions
- Bridge, 2025. Photo by Genevieve Hanson. Courtesy of the artist and Jeffrey Deitch, New York.
- City Egg, 2025. Photos by Genevieve Hanson. Courtesy of the artist and Jeffrey Deitch, New York.
- Love Complicated Jug, 2024. Photos by Charles White / JW Photos. Courtesy of the artist and Jeffrey Deitch, New York.
- Long Distance Runner Jug, 2024. Photo by Genevieve Hanson. Courtesy of the artist and Jeffrey Deitch, New York.
- Archangel Egg, 2025. Photo by Genevieve Hanson. Courtesy of the artist and Jeffrey Deitch, New York.
- Mother Sun Fountain, 2024. Photo by Genevieve Hanson. Courtesy of the artist and Jeffrey Deitch, New York.
- Biso, 2021. Photo by Paul Salveson / Selvas Photography Services. Courtesy of the artist and Jeffrey Deitch, New York.
