Botanical Wall
Private Residence, Dominican Republic
8 x 21 ft
Wall Smith
Private Residence, Calabasas
9 x 9 ft
Waves
The Conrad Grand, Downtown Los Angeles, California
8 x 27 ft, 2022
Material / Memory / Myth
Presented by Jeff Lincoln + Nicole Timonier
October 13- October 31
Los Angeles, California
Blue Tower, 94 x 11 x 11
A strand of beads, familiar forms stacked and balanced, questioning scale in relation to the body.
Truncated Biconical Tower
Private Residence, Los Angeles, California
94 x 11 x 11
Proper Pool Wall
Proper Hotel, Downtown Los Angeles, California
Interiors Designed by Kelly Wearstler
9 x 40 ft, 2020
Tangled Rectangle Wall
Private residence, Hancock Park, California
8 x 10 ft, 2020
Mental
Harvey Preston Gallery
March 18 - April 15, 2021
Aspen, CO
A two-person exhibition featuring works by LA based ceramic artist Ben Medansky and Argentinian painter Pablo Martin at Harvey Preston Gallery in Aspen, CO. The discourse of the show is based on the connection between abstract thought and the exclusively human ability of imagining new worlds.
Waves
The Proper Hotel Santa Monica, California
2019
Ceramic mural installed at the Kelly Wearstler designed hotel. Inspired by ocean waves and rippling beach sand. 20 x 5 ft
Way Finding, 2020, 96” x 20” x 3”
Materialzations
July 14 - August 25, 2018
A group exhibition that finds pleasure and meaning in materiality.
"Stacks" a monumental whole made up of many parts—that utilizes repeated forms from base to top. Historically, totems have had a symbolic dimension to them; this abstract work, without inherent symbology, instead draws attention to the intricacy of its craftsmanship—it was made by hand, and reflects the artist’s careful, measured approach."
MELTING POINT: Movements in Contemporary Clay
January 28 - May 6, 2018
“Stories” Terracotta - Medansky has always been drawn to the aesthetics and themes of technology and media. In stories, he explores the ramifications of social media on communication and community building. To create the piece, Medansky projected communication threads from his social media platforms onto wet clay slabs and inscribed them into the clay. He repeated this process until the layers of words and images became indistinguishable, Then fired the slabs and stained them with blue underglaze. Arranged as a religious triptych, he is referencing early forms of record keeping that incised marks into clay tablets, as well as storytelling through religious iconography. The works format also shows the similarities between the intense devotion of social media followers and followers of religion. The use of blue is to seduce an audience and gain their attention, as well as representing the blue screen we construct our fantasies upon.
Making It Work: Production by Design
The American Museum of Ceramic Art
April 7, 2018 – September 16, 2018
A complementary exhibition to Discovering Saar Ceramics. It extends the model of the artist/entrepreneur practiced at mid-20th century by Richard Saar into our current culture. Showcased are design collections created by potters pursuing careers in both camps of fine art and industrial art. The featured artists/founders have established ceramic studios and originated elegantly designed production lines of simple, contemporary forms that function beautifully with everyday use. Enabled by social media, online selling platforms, and designer showrooms, these ceramists offer their uniquely handcrafted dinner, serving, and housewares design lines to the global market. Thoughtfully handmade in their Los Angeles studios, these artists are reinventing the business of small art potteries and expanding the aesthetic possibilities of ceramic production. Featured artists: Ana Henton and Mel Keedle of Still Life Ceramics Ben Medansky Nobuhito Nishigawara of W/R/F Lab Peter Sheldon Bari Ziperstein of Bzippy & Co Click here to view the press release and/or images.
The Ashtray Show
June 22 – September 9, 2018
The AshtrayShow celebrates another seemingly obsolete object from the mid-century-modern deskscape – now perhaps made relevant again by the legalization of marijuana. Smoking is back envogue and we can all finally start accessorizing again!
Decorative Arts and Design Department Recent Acquisitions
Los Angeles County Museum of Art Permanent Collection
The four mugs are the premiums of membership in the Medansky Mug Society, an artistic project in which subscribers received four mugs over the course of a year. The black, white, and electric blue color palette and the applied geometric designs are typical of Medansky’s architecture-inspired aesthetic. Mugs became one of Medansky’s specialties when he was commissioned to make custom versions for Los Angeles coffee shops G&B Coffee and Go Get ‘Em Tiger. His handmade mugs represented an extension of the third wave coffee shop ideal of knowing the source of your goods, and as nondisposable objects made in Los Angeles, they fulfilled a desire to support local production, a local artist, and sustainability concerns. The Medansky Mug Society was created to experiment with a new paradigm for the distribution of his work, which was both high and low—Medansky offered his mugs as limited edition works of art, provocatively claiming high artistic status, but made them available through a subscription model, like magazines or consumer goods.
The vase represents a very different side of Medansky’s artistic practice. In addition to functional objects, Medansky also makes clay sculpture and architectural cladding. While nominally a vase, the sculpture-like piece is constructed of the most basic geometric forms. This piece was finished inadvertently in a devastating fire at Medansky’s studio in downtown Los Angeles in 2016, in which nearly all of his work was lost. The fire “fired” the piece, giving it a distinctive black speckle surface design that could not have been achieved in the kiln. As a result of the fire, Medansky had to find a new studio space and new tools. He opted not to buy a wheel, that mainstay of the ceramist, but instead an extruder in order to shift his focus to geometric sculpture. Since the pre-fire functional production has ended, and he is embarking on a new phase in his career, these pieces represent a completed body of work.