"True and Real" NCECA Annual Exhibition

curated by Judith Schwartz

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7 March - 31 May, 2025
Utah Museum of Art

Salt Lake City,

Utah, USA

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The NCECA Annual Exhibition, True and Real, will run concurrently with FORMATION, the 59th annual conference of the National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts, Salt Lake City, Utah, March 26-29, 2025. 
 

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“Green Regeneration”

The contemporary context while having sublime aspects of extreme prosperity, freedom and scientific evolution has disturbing implications represented by involutional vortices of technological mirages, environmental and economic-political euthanasia. A panorama resulting from a systemic crisis between civilization and nature that is coming to an epochal collapse. Analysing for many years the phenomena of consumerism affecting our society as a fundamental part of my research,

Recognizing myself in the inclusive concept of the collective unconscious, respecting cultural and ethnic diversity, I identify with my archaic Greco-Latin roots, the medieval visionary world and the whole cycle of transformation of Western art from Giotto to the avant-garde to the open sea of the contemporary. A wide range of techniques from the most traditional modelling solid, coil and slab hand-building, wheel to the most recent advances in 3-D printing in clay was used to create the figures that were completed with organic materials dipped in slip. As a proposal for “True & Real” I am presenting a group of green icons of heterogeneous constitution and morphology that want to offer themselves to humans as simulacra of nature with the intention of strengthening an ecological regeneration in support of the environmental crisis that is the first real and true emergency on which everything else depends.

 

 

Schwartz shares the following about her vision for the exhibition:

Life in the twenty-first century has witnessed enormous social change. While each generation perceives increments of change, this century, propelled by advances in technology, is generally recognized as one of the most destabilizing and disorienting. Robotics, artificial intelligence, demographic shifts in population, population growth (negative and positive), environmental challenges, social media, self-driving cars, and medical advances, to name but a few, have all contributed to this emotional upheaval.

For millennia, the medium of clay has chronicled the human condition and has often borne witness to ethnic, national, gender, and cultural identities. Seen in this light, ceramics’ place in contemporary art is becoming more and more valued as a transformative medium that is intimately human, unassuming, and distinctively expressive.

As new technologies, including Artificial Intelligence, blur the distinction between artifice and reality, people of imagination are seeking - no - demanding that which is True and Real. This quest has never been more urgent.


True and Real seeks artists and artworks that highlight issues that resonate with the complexities of the current condition…the concerns, fears, and issues that create a common ground to which we can all relate. The art might reveal an empathic voice that responds to who I am, what I value, and how I can be seen, heard, and understood. It invites narrative content, representation, and figuration on ceramic form in all its variations. The intent is to strengthen the power of art to convey personal values and the social condition - to appreciate broader-based understanding, appreciation, and tolerance for our cultural diversity, personal interests, values, and priorities.

ABOUT THE CURATOR:

Judith S. Schwartz, Ph.D., is a Professor Emeritus from New York University and president of The Museum of Ceramic Art - New York (MoCA/NY). During her tenure at NYU, she served as head of the Sculpture in Craft Media area for forty years. As a curator, Schwartz’s exhibitions have garnered national and international attention. Notable exhibitions include NYNY: Clay, All Fired Up, InCiteful Clay, and Confrontational Ceramics, for which she also authored an eponymously title book. Learn more at www.judyschwartz.com.

ABOUT THE MUSEUM
The Utah Museum of Contemporary Art (UMOCA) believes in the power of the art of our time. Through programming, advocacy, and collaboration, we work with artists and communities to build a better world.

Since 1931, UMOCA has been a gathering space for artists and creatives in our region. Today, UMOCA’s exhibitions, art education programs, community engagement, and one-of-a-kind artist residency support local artists and communities while showcasing art from across the nation and globe.

UMOCA is a seven-time recipient of funding from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and a two-time recipient of the Art Works Grant from the National Endowment for the Art.