Tefaf New York Spring

10 - 14 May 2024

Overview

Lucie Rie, Magdalene Odundo and Jennifer Lee

‘Pottery is at once the simplest and most difficult of arts. It is the simplest because it is the most elemental; it is the most difficult because it is the most abstract.’
Herbert Read, 1944

Lucie Rie, Magdalene Odundo and Jennifer Lee are rightly regarded as three of the leading lights of the contemporary ceramics scene. All are artists whose techniques of production, whilst different, are drawn together by their unrivalled understanding and masterful handling of the earth’s most basic material – clay.

Born in Vienna in 1902, Lucie Rie arrived in Britain in 1938, fleeing Nazi-occupied Austria. Alongside a suitcase of carefully packed pots, she brought with her a profound appreciation of the very highest ideals of European Modernism. Rie irrevocably changed the course of the British art scene, reshaping perceptions of ceramics within the realms of art. Through her elegantly thrown stoneware and porcelain vessels, each decorated by hand with luscious, lustrous glazes, Rie not only paved the way for a future generation of makers – including Odundo and Lee – but also catapulted ceramic arts in Britain onto a global stage.

Unlike Rie, who threw on the wheel, both Magdalene Odundo (b.1950) and Jennifer Lee (b.1956) hand build their forms, working with a rich visual vocabulary refined over many decades. Based around the simple principles of the vessel, each stretches her materials to its very limits. Odundo works in low-fired terracotta which is then burnished, creating towering anthropomorphic forms that weave together references from different cultures and geographies. Lee works in high-fired stoneware with added oxides (but no glazes or surface embellishments) that often draw parallels with the natural world – from her native Scottish Highlands, through to the arid deserts of North America and the mountainous Shiga region of Japan.

These three artists understand and make use of clay in very different ways, creating works that challenge and amaze in equal measure. What unites them is their sheer sophistication, ability and technical understanding of materials and form, elevating them beyond the craft, and aligning them with some of the greatest artists of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

PRESS: House & Garden's coverage of our exhibit

PRESS: Apollo's coverage of our exhibit

PRESS: Odundo selected by designer Jamie Drake in Galerie Magazine

PRESS: Our booth featured on Artsy's fair highlights

Lucie Rie, Magdalene Odundo & Jennifer Lee

Booth 351 (Main Hall)

Location

Park Avenue Armory
643 Park Avenue
NY 10065 New York
United States

Opening Hours
9 May by invitation only

Friday 10 May 11am - 7pm

Saturday 11 May 11am - 7pm

Sunday 12 May 11am - 7pm