The extraordinary experimentation in ceramic art of Los Angeles since World War II is international in scope. Among the most inventive and significant artists since 1970 is Adrian Saxe. Saxe's early work was site-specific sculpture that employed arrays of modular ceramic elements. Some of these pieces were exhibited in the late 1960s at the Pasadena Art Museum.
Saxe has worked with the ceramic vessel because he saw the opportunity to address complex social and cultural issues in a format accessible to a broad audience. Since the early 1980s, Saxe has sought to reinvent a role for ceramic art that employs decorative art conventions to comment on social and cultural expectations surrounding a number of topical themes. Some of these themes are explored in his new exhibition, GRIN—Genetic Robotic Information Nano (Technologies).
Christopher Knight of the Los Angeles Times has written, "With outrageous humor and unspeakable beauty, [Saxe] makes intensely seductive objects that exploit traditional anthropomorphic qualities associated with ceramics. Having pressed the question of the utility of his own art in a post-industrial world, his work engages us in a dialogue about our own place in a radically shifting cultural universe."
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