Alex Zablocki
Alex Zablocki
Alex Zablocki is an American Ceramic Artist whose work takes apart the ceramic vessel and re-animates its constituent parts incorporating vestiges of utilitarian ceramics, which slip along saturations of colored glaze. In 2008, Alex received his Bachelor in Fine Arts from Finlandia University and has since then pursued two Post-Bachelor programs at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and Colorado State University. In 2017 he received his Master of Fine Arts from The New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University. His work has been shown both nationally and internationally at a wide range of galleries and art centers including, The Archie Bray Foundation in Helena Montana and The CC Gallery in Taiwan and ALCOVA Design Week in Milan, Italy. His work can be found in the M.F.A. Collection of Alfred’s Ceramic Arts Museum ACAM in Alfred, NY and other private collections. Alex currently resides in Alma, MI. During his free time, Alex enjoys eating good food, drinking hand craft beer, playing music and hanging out with family and friends.
The truth will often make you laugh. Humor can lighten. Sometimes laughter is the best medicine.
My work takes apart the ceramic vessel and re-animates its constituent parts. Vestiges of utilitarian ceramics are free to perform as comic objects frozen in acrobatic recombination. The proper anatomy of the vessel is let loose and the assembled parts slip along viscous saturations of colored glaze.
My interest in the transmutation of materials propels my adventure with alchemy. I am drawn to the theatrical. Drama invites exciting, emotional, and unexpected circumstances. This work references excessive behavior.
I integrate the pedestal as a stage. My objects sit and perform. Display animates this theater. Elevated tension, delicate balance, and hyperbole are the tools I use to activate the work. These objects entertain and charm as they dance with light and shadow. They flirt with gravity in curious ways.
Precariously stacked
forms display
gyroscopic tendencies
and reveal a
heightened awareness
and a sense of
wonder.
Lush, generous surfaces seductively stimulate the senses. Handles bounce and coil like Slinky’s and thin-walled cylinders deform into pyroclastic flows that emulate a fold in my stomach.
I incorporate ceramic materials’ uncanny ability to mimic the familiar. Thick slices of juicy orange glaze operate as household sponges. Hearty drips fall like melted Velveeta cheese. Luminous greens resemble Laffy Taffy.
I search for the extension of an experience. Through a duration of engagement, I seduce the viewer or myself into thinking we have discovered something new. I poke and prod the vessel, often doing things I am not comfortable with. Through the distortion of the familiar, I challenge and question modes of making along with the intractability of the vessel. The adaptation and reconfiguration of the vessel in my current practice happens through the “ringing out” of materials and processes, vessel form, history, and convention to extract something fresh.
