February 27, 2025
Brittany Mojo
Strong Spell
Craig Krull Gallery
February 1 - March 15, 2025
Brittany Mojo
Hardly a month of Los Angeles gallery viewing goes by without an exhibition featuring ceramic artworks. This includes Brittany Mojo at Craig Krull, Emily Marchand at Ochi Projects and Hadi Falapishi at Blum. Once considered a mere "craft," more and more artists are embracing clay as their preferred medium while using it to make all manner of vessels, sculptures, and even installations. Brittany Mojo who studied ceramics at California State University, Long Beach (BFA) and at UCLA (MFA 2016) has a long history working in this medium.
Stemming from the emotions surrounding the pandemic for the last several years, Mojo's works have been black and white. But color prevails in her latest exhibition Strong Spell. The new works utilize various colored clays made by mixing stain or underglaze into white substrates. The colored clay is then cut into sections or tiles and then attached to larger pots and structures to create textured and unevenly patterned surfaces as in the twelve-inch high Tile or the sixteen-inch high Quilt (both 2024).
While Mojo draws on the tradition of quilting as well as vernacular design for inspiration, her pots come from her imagination and have a child-like spontaneity that radiates the joy of their making. It is hard not to smile at For Better or worse (2024), a rounded off-white container covered with colorful hand-drawn flowers. Wandering around the installation which unfolds like a maze on the gallery floor one encounters numerous plates and vessels, many placed on bulbous wooden pedestals, as well as conch shaped and small round objects —- an egg and a tennis ball —- all crafted in porcelain and delicately painted. Big and small are presented together, often in clusters so as to suggest possible conversations between the pieces. When the colorful pot Tile nests up close to the black and white patterned Conch (2025) or when the functional Lamp (2025) is juxtaposed with the smaller vessel Orange Daisies (no date) playful relationships are formed eliciting reactive smiles
Mojo excels at rendering patterns and in black and white works like Snake Egg, Spiral Check, A Book on Pattern, Shell and Seashell, her hand painted underglazes cover the entire surface, becoming illusionistic three dimensional geometric abstractions. A wonderful collection of her deliberate but child-like handwork can be seen in a floor-based piece made up of twenty-five individual tiles where black out lines of simple shapes — like flowers and an ice cream cone are juxtaposed with Ellsworth Kelly like stripes, as well as grids of triangles and diamonds in complementary and contrasting colors.
Collectively the installation resonates as the interplay between the pieces makes them richer. There is no doubt that Mojo's process is labor intensive, yet the pieces burst forth with joy as if they spontaneously appeared positioned exactly as they should be in the gallery. A strong spell is cast when viewing the installation, a spell that helps to alleviate the sense of grief from the recent fires and the oppressive nature of world events. Mojo creates an alternate reality filled with wonderful and evocative objects that offer a sense of reprieve from the realities that surround us.
Strong Spell
Craig Krull Gallery
February 1 - March 15, 2025
Brittany Mojo
Hardly a month of Los Angeles gallery viewing goes by without an exhibition featuring ceramic artworks. This includes Brittany Mojo at Craig Krull, Emily Marchand at Ochi Projects and Hadi Falapishi at Blum. Once considered a mere "craft," more and more artists are embracing clay as their preferred medium while using it to make all manner of vessels, sculptures, and even installations. Brittany Mojo who studied ceramics at California State University, Long Beach (BFA) and at UCLA (MFA 2016) has a long history working in this medium.
Stemming from the emotions surrounding the pandemic for the last several years, Mojo's works have been black and white. But color prevails in her latest exhibition Strong Spell. The new works utilize various colored clays made by mixing stain or underglaze into white substrates. The colored clay is then cut into sections or tiles and then attached to larger pots and structures to create textured and unevenly patterned surfaces as in the twelve-inch high Tile or the sixteen-inch high Quilt (both 2024).
While Mojo draws on the tradition of quilting as well as vernacular design for inspiration, her pots come from her imagination and have a child-like spontaneity that radiates the joy of their making. It is hard not to smile at For Better or worse (2024), a rounded off-white container covered with colorful hand-drawn flowers. Wandering around the installation which unfolds like a maze on the gallery floor one encounters numerous plates and vessels, many placed on bulbous wooden pedestals, as well as conch shaped and small round objects —- an egg and a tennis ball —- all crafted in porcelain and delicately painted. Big and small are presented together, often in clusters so as to suggest possible conversations between the pieces. When the colorful pot Tile nests up close to the black and white patterned Conch (2025) or when the functional Lamp (2025) is juxtaposed with the smaller vessel Orange Daisies (no date) playful relationships are formed eliciting reactive smiles
Mojo excels at rendering patterns and in black and white works like Snake Egg, Spiral Check, A Book on Pattern, Shell and Seashell, her hand painted underglazes cover the entire surface, becoming illusionistic three dimensional geometric abstractions. A wonderful collection of her deliberate but child-like handwork can be seen in a floor-based piece made up of twenty-five individual tiles where black out lines of simple shapes — like flowers and an ice cream cone are juxtaposed with Ellsworth Kelly like stripes, as well as grids of triangles and diamonds in complementary and contrasting colors.
Collectively the installation resonates as the interplay between the pieces makes them richer. There is no doubt that Mojo's process is labor intensive, yet the pieces burst forth with joy as if they spontaneously appeared positioned exactly as they should be in the gallery. A strong spell is cast when viewing the installation, a spell that helps to alleviate the sense of grief from the recent fires and the oppressive nature of world events. Mojo creates an alternate reality filled with wonderful and evocative objects that offer a sense of reprieve from the realities that surround us.