In the Project Room: Niki Ford: Pompeii Drag
Current exhibition
Overview
In the Project Room:
Niki Ford: Pompeii Drag
October 24 - December 14
Opening Reception Thursday, October 24th
6-8pm
Broadway is pleased to present Pompeii Drag a solo presentation of new ceramics and paintings by Los Angeles-based artist Niki Ford in the gallery’s Project Room.
Ford channels otherworldly narratives through pigmented stoneware sculpture, mixed-media paintings and works on paper. These pieces take us on a journey through the body, water, plants, landforms, poetry/prayer, histories/time and vortexes of many shapes and sizes. They lean into the corporeal, intuitive, reparative, devotional, and exemplary possibility expressed through queerness, gender non-conformity and gender spectrum identities.
Born of a recent trip to Pompeii and an immersion in its adjacent museums, this body of work engages the doomed city’s ancient history as a source of formal inspiration and as the initiator of a peculiar mode of drag. In this case, the concept of drag is applied formally and temporally rather than directly to gender. Ford’s absorption and appropriation of the murals, bas reliefs, mummified foodstuffs, jewelry, and devotional objects of this tragic site are transmuted into present day objects of humor and pathos.
Each vessel and object in the exhibition has a referent or touchstone in history, from the non-binary femminielli of Medieval Italy, to the queer revolutionary Cockettes of 1960s-70s San Francisco. The Cyclops and Merlin the Magician also make an appearance, dissolving any remaining boundary between past and present, history and myth.
Taken together, the proposed works evidence the artist’s commitment to line, texture, vibration, color, repetition/pattern, sympathetic gesture and repair. These formal conventions are used to address queerness and gender complexities through pattern (and deviation from it) and a generalized misdirection of form and function.
Niki Ford: Pompeii Drag
October 24 - December 14
Opening Reception Thursday, October 24th
6-8pm
Broadway is pleased to present Pompeii Drag a solo presentation of new ceramics and paintings by Los Angeles-based artist Niki Ford in the gallery’s Project Room.
Ford channels otherworldly narratives through pigmented stoneware sculpture, mixed-media paintings and works on paper. These pieces take us on a journey through the body, water, plants, landforms, poetry/prayer, histories/time and vortexes of many shapes and sizes. They lean into the corporeal, intuitive, reparative, devotional, and exemplary possibility expressed through queerness, gender non-conformity and gender spectrum identities.
Born of a recent trip to Pompeii and an immersion in its adjacent museums, this body of work engages the doomed city’s ancient history as a source of formal inspiration and as the initiator of a peculiar mode of drag. In this case, the concept of drag is applied formally and temporally rather than directly to gender. Ford’s absorption and appropriation of the murals, bas reliefs, mummified foodstuffs, jewelry, and devotional objects of this tragic site are transmuted into present day objects of humor and pathos.
Each vessel and object in the exhibition has a referent or touchstone in history, from the non-binary femminielli of Medieval Italy, to the queer revolutionary Cockettes of 1960s-70s San Francisco. The Cyclops and Merlin the Magician also make an appearance, dissolving any remaining boundary between past and present, history and myth.
Taken together, the proposed works evidence the artist’s commitment to line, texture, vibration, color, repetition/pattern, sympathetic gesture and repair. These formal conventions are used to address queerness and gender complexities through pattern (and deviation from it) and a generalized misdirection of form and function.
Exhibition
NIKI FORD, INSTALLATION VIEW, POMPEII DRAG, BROADWAY, NY, 2024
Works
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Niki FordHibiscus Goes to Pompeii, 2024stoneware, paper clay, underglaze, glaze, mason stain, tung oil and glitter41 x 12 x 16 inches -
Niki FordFashion Plait, 2024acrylic, flashe and archival marker on canvas48 x 36 inches
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Niki FordFreaky Greekie, 2024stoneware, paper clay, underglaze, glaze, mason stain, oxide, nichrome wire, gouache, tung oil and epoxy44 x 16 x 13.5 inches
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Niki FordGhost Drag, 2024acrylic, flashe and archival marker on canvas40 x 30 inches
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Niki FordTemple Drag, 2024acrylic, flashe and archival marker on canvas40 x 30 inches
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Niki FordFruit Boy, 2024stoneware, underglaze, glaze, oxide, epoxy, nichrome wire, gouache, tung oil and crystal chandelier parts with wire22 x 8 x 8.5 inches
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Niki FordThree-Legged Mage, 2024stoneware, underglaze, glaze, mason stain, oxide, gouache, tung oil and epoxy19 x 14 x 13 inches
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Niki FordExquisite Corpse, 2024stoneware, paper clay, underglaze, glaze, mason stain, oxide, epoxy, tung oil and desert rocks39 x 18 x 18 inches
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Niki FordCross Sections of the Columns Revealed Multicolored Tree Rings, 2024sumi ink and gouache on Igarashi Kozo paper46 x 66 inches framed
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Niki FordYoung Merlin Goes to Pompeii, 2024stoneware, glaze, underglaze, mason stain, oxide, gouache, nichrome wire, tung oil and epoxy21 x 17 x 14 inches
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Niki FordFemminiello, 2024stoneware, underglaze, glaze, oxide, mason stain, epoxy gouache, tung oil and terrazzo base41.25 x 16 x 15 inches
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Niki FordSissy of Antiquity, 2024stoneware, paper clay, underglaze, glaze, mason stains, oxide, gouache and tung oil46 x 17 x 18 inches
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Niki FordCyclops Cleverly Disguised as a Carbon Breast, 2024stoneware, underglaze, glaze, mason stain and tung oil13 x 3.5 inches
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Niki FordLava Lamp (with one skull, three owls and one dandelion leaf), 2024stoneware, glaze, underglaze, mason stain, oxide, nichrome wire, gouache, tung oil and epoxy19 x 11 x 10 inches
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Niki FordHeavy Metal (necklace and ring), 2024stoneware, glaze, oxide, tung oil and epoxy16 x 8 x 1.25 inches
1.5 x 1.25 x 1.5 inches
