Exhibition

Salon Highlight: Jake Clark
March 4, 2023 - April. 26, 2023

Louis Buhl & Co. is pleased to present our latest Salon Highlight with Jake Clark, opening March 4th 2023. A native Australian and a recent resident of New York City, Clark is a sculptor, ceramicist, and painter whose work examines our relationship to contemporary culture and iconography. Taking inspiration from the world around him, Clark’s work captures the current moment through its reinterpretation of signs, product branding, and logos. His visual sources extend to supermarkets, restaurant menus, advertisements and visuals such as billboards and local businesses.

Presented in Clark’s Salon Highlight is a series of fifteen acrylic-painted bronze ashtrays rich in references to art history. Indicated by the arched curves representative of waves that repeat across the surface of each piece, the sculptures are inspired by David Hockney’s Pool Paintings, an iconic body of work by a legendary British artist that has become a cultural icon of America, in particular California. Clark has long had a fascination with the city of Los Angeles for its abundance of mid-century homes and scenery, and recalls spending much time at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel where Hockey himself painted the pool. Like Hockney, Clark is an artist from outside of the United States who has found extensive inspiration in visiting—and now living—in the country, and this visual influence is immediately apparent when encountering his work.

The ashtrays came into play through experimenting with leftover bits of clay from his larger vessels, and have since become a signature of Clark’s practice. Special about the series, it is the first time the artist has worked in bronze, noting the experience of painting atop the surfaces was much different than with his typical use of clay; each sculpture required three to four layers of paint to achieve the desired result. The casts were pulled from a mold Clark made for a previous clay piece and were then produced at a foundry. Once the raw works were produced, he welded the cigarette butts onto the ashtrays in varying positions to lend each one unique qualities. Like all of his works, the sculptures are not “perfect;” their unrefined texture reveals hints of Clark’s hand and mimics the charming but simultaneously flawed nature of Los Angeles, New York, Melbourne, and the many other locations throughout the world that ignite his colorful creations.

Salon Highlight: Jake Clark is on view from March 4 through April 26th, 2023 at Louis Buhl & Co.