On Differentiation and Affinity to Open

Peter Pincus, “Line Blending,” 2018, colored porcelain, gold luster

 

Peter Pincus and Adam Welch elevate the seemingly mundane to extraordinary levels in their new exhibition, On Differentiation and Affinity, which opens 5-8 PM Friday at Pewabic and runs through May 6.

With vastly different outcomes, both artists explore the nature of the aesthetic and unexpected ways to achieve it by transforming the expectations of the everyday: one by laboriously layering fairly ordinary materials culminating in extraordinary finished products; the other by creating carefully considered art that resembles something straddling the ordinary and the extraordinary.

“They both look at the contemporary interpretation of a classical object and change the perception,” says Darlene Carroll, curator of exhibitions at Pewabic.

This is the first exhibition in Detroit for Pincus, assistant professor of art at the School for American Crafts at Rochester Institute of Technology. His recent work is integrally linked with his study of 18th century English potter and entrepreneur Josiah Wedgwood and Wedgwood’s efforts to claim intellectual ownership of what was an ancient vessel-crafting practice.

Adam Welch, “Fetish: Mother of Pearl,” Brick, glaze, mother of pearl, wood, 2018

Welch is a ceramics professor at Princeton’s Lewis Center for the Arts, president of Artaxis, and gallery manager at the Mattress Factory. He explores history, culture and self through one specific object: a brick. His Bauhaus Bricks series suggests a close relationship between the modern and the traditional, with meanings colliding.