Roger Herman: From California With Love is on view at Carpenters Workshop Gallery, London
February 9 – April 26, 2024
Carpenters Workshop Gallery presents an exhibition of new works by Los Angeles-based multidisciplinary artist Roger Herman. Titled From California With Love, the exhibition presents his latest body of work including ceramics and large-scale canvases, delving into the evolution of Herman’s painterly approach to his practice across multiple mediums. The works are characterised by their experimental use of colour, texture, material, process and form, all central aspects of the artist’s work to date. Herman’s evolution from painting to ceramics is marked by his fascination with how colour changes during the glazing process, a theme he has been exploring since the late 1990s.
The exhibition showcases fifteen of Herman’s latest large, hand-crafted ceramics, each a testament to his innovative and exploratory style. Starting with wheel-thrown clay, Herman shapes these forms through stacking or cutting, resulting in works that often feature irregular shapes, spontaneous voids or protrusions, pushing the limits of traditional ceramic design. He then applies a variety of vibrant, glossy and matte glazes in rapid strokes, enhancing the tactile feel of the works and creating a unique painterly expression through the interplay of clay and glaze. This approach results in ceramics that celebrate the concepts of imperfection and unpredictability.
The ceramics are accompanied by a selection of six large-scale paintings. Much like the ceramics, the painting process embraces unpredictability, with the final hues of each work revealing themselves unexpectedly. Both the paintings and ceramics correspond to each other within the gallery space, united by their gestural awareness and spontaneous vibrancy. This interplay between various mediums highlights Herman’s instinctive artistic method, where his distinctive palette—developed through experimental work with clay, glazes and kilns—manifests in both colour and form.
Loic Le Gaillard comments “We are thrilled to unveil Roger Herman’s new body of work at our London gallery, where his talent is vividly expressed across diverse mediums. His ceramics and paintings aren’t just parallel works, they are intricately interwoven, each a natural extension and reflection of the other.”
About Roger Herman
Born in Germany before relocating to LA, Herman began his career creating paintings of phenomenal proportion and was christened as the West Coast parallel of the eighties neo-Expressionist movement, before he began working in clay. His painterly beginnings remain apparent in his approach, as he treats each pot as a blank canvas on which he layers brush strokes, using dashes, lines and splodges to build texture as well as colour. Fascinated by the way that the firing and glazing processes affect the colour, Herman has found freedom in this medium.
A teacher at UCLA since the 1980s, a fertile ground for the city’s artistic community, Herman shifted to ceramics after taking lessons from one of his students where he cast some 500 pots whilst perfecting his technique. His ceramic practice takes inspiration from the human body, with some evocative and figurative in nature, while others veer more towards abstraction.
Herman has exhibited his work in galleries across the world and is held in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). His work has featured at fairs such at Frieze New York, Design Miami, and Art Los Angeles Art Contemporary. He has also participated in numerous group shows at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., Museum Ludwig, Saarlouis, Germany, and the Art Museum of São Paulo, Brazil among others.
About Carpenters Workshop Gallery
Specialising in Functional Art and Collectible Design, Carpenters Workshop Gallery focuses on producing and exhibiting the work of international artists, designers, and architects, who look to push the boundaries of what is traditionally presented within the confines of the gallery and art fair space.
Carpenters Workshop Gallery is founded on the partnership of childhood friends, Julien Lombrail and Loic Le Gaillard, who first opened the gallery in a former carpenter’s workshop in London’s Mayfair. Since then, Carpenters Workshop Gallery has proven its deserved place as a leading pioneer in the world of high art and design, expanding to operate four galleries worldwide, situated in key locations of London, Paris, New York, and Los Angeles.
Actively involved in the research, conservation and production of limited edition works, the gallery’s choices are guided by seeking an emotional, artistic, and historical relevance and breaking boundaries between art and design. This ethos is exemplified by the founding of The Workshop complex in Mitry-Mory, on the outskirts of Paris – a unique 8,000 square meters space dedicated to artistic research, bringing together the elite of practitioners and artisans. Within this creative hub, Carpenters Workshop Gallery artists and leading artisans work collaboratively to produce pieces with a hand-finished touch.
The gallery’s next exciting chapter is the recent opening of Carpenters Workshop Gallery’s new London space, within the expansive Notting Hill arts hub, Ladbroke Hall. This new destination, dedicated to presenting ambitious programming across all forms of creative expression, confirms the leadership role of Carpenters Workshop Gallery in today’s international territory of art and design and their intersectionality.
Contact
london@carpentersworkshopgallery.com
Carpenters Workshop Gallery
79 Barlby Rd
London W10 6AZ
United Kingdom
Photography by Benjamin Baccarani, courtesy of Carpenters Workshop Gallery
