WHEN:
September 5–October 18, 2025
WHERE:
Paula Cooper Gallery
534 W 21st Street
New York, NY 10011
For more information and tickets visit the Paula Cooper Gallery website.
A spokesperson describes the event as follows:
“...Yamada is known for his rigorous investigation of the conceptual possibilities of clay, and his sensitivity to surfaces and materials. Each work employs ceramic in a surprising way, presenting forms that are playful, poetic and unexpected.
Meticulous techniques with glazes and clays allows Yamada to disguise ceramics as other media. Two sculptures formed of intersecting tubes of clay, for example, are glazed to resemble the patina of aluminum or oxidized copper, while a work from the Gravitation series presents a thin slab of clay, folded and hung over a rope like a piece of fabric.
On the walls are works from Yamada’s Smoke (2013) and Dust in the Rain (2021) series. In the earlier work, fingertip indentations are clustered together and overlapping, creating a complex surface structure that glistens with metallic glaze. The “dust” in Yamada’s recent panels refers to glass beads which the artist scattered atop the surface, allowing them to melt in the kiln and form constellations of colored dots.
A single work not in ceramic––Infinity, 2015––belies Yamada’s interest in found objects and the lasting influence of Duchamp and Brancusi. Four dowels mounted on a found panel support a taught rope in a diamond-shape, a simple arrangement of disparate parts captured in a moment of elegant coherence..."
