LG Williams · Est. 1969Samizdat Archive
LG Williams Samizdat Archive
SAMIZDAT
1993–2026
Essay: LG Williams introduces the Grey Matter ceramic series as somatic thought linking hand, brain, and evolutionary intelligence, 2016

"Grey Matter" Series

This press release introduces Williams's Grey Matter series as small porcelain objects with outsized ambitions: ceramics as evolutionary argument, conceptual assault, and tactile philosophy. The works are described as reenactments of the hand manipulating clay, their folds and surfaces linking the biomechanics of touch to the structure of the brain itself. Against postmodern and conceptual traditions that dematerialize art into discourse, the series insists on the hand as the original intelligence of artistic production. The text's analogy to Chinese scholars' rocks gives the objects a contemplative lineage while refusing any merely decorative reading. Grey Matter becomes a compact manifesto for art as somatic thought, where clay, thumb, brain, and human evolution are compressed into pale ceramic form.

DATE:
December 3, 2016
DOCUMENT TYPE:
Essay / Critique
NAMED ARTISTS / FIGURES:
LG Williams; B. Pierre Beigay; Robert Thurman
INSTITUTIONS / VENUES:
Fuga Gallery; The Estate of LG Williams; Los Angeles
KEYWORDS:
ceramics as evolutionary argument; hand as original intelligence; somatic thought in clay; biomechanics of touch; scholars rocks as lineage; discourse dismantled by matter; brain and thumb compressed; Grey Matter as philosophy
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