Take Five: Ceramics
Created with cake decorating tools that amplify a visual sense of excess and kitsch, the elaborately ornate ceramic vessels created by Robert Chamberlain lend themselves, at first glance, to relatively direct interpretations surrounding decadent queer sensibilities. Also contained within their candy- colored, often imploded or collapsed forms, however, is a pointed critique of social structures built on consumption, accumulation, and indulgence. A solo presentation of the artist’s work at Marcia Wood Gallery in 2018 emphasized this aspect of social commentary in Chamberlain’s work: larger collapsed vessels were flanked by collections of smaller porcelain works—crowded ceramic audiences, the common people, looking on as wealthy elites doom themselves by clinging to too much power.
