Tristan Hoare Gallery to Present Peter Schlesinger’s Ceramic Works at PAD London

Untitled By Peter Schlesinger (2021). Courtesy of Tristan Hoare and PAD London.

From October 8 to 13, design connoisseurs leap to PAD London, the international design fair poised to launch its 16th edition. Over the next 10 weeks, NUVO shines a spotlight on the fair’s roster of talented newcomers, many of whom are local to London, and identifies the artists and exhibitors who should be on every visitor’s radar.

Our first stop is the Grade 1-listed Georgian townhouse in Fitzroy Square that is home to Tristan Hoare Gallery—and kitty-corner to rooms once occupied by novelist Virginia Woolf and artist Vanessa Bell. Here craftsmanship takes centre stage in a solo exhibition of glazed stoneware vessels by New York-based sculptor, painter, and photographer Peter Schlesinger.

Sturdy in proportion and elegantly restrained in an understated palette of browns, golds, blues, and greens, Schlesinger’s creations sit nobly atop stepped plinths, appearing as if recently unearthed from an archaeological dig.

Both classic and timeless, Schlesinger’s ceramic vessels are large in stature—some a metre tall, which is as big as Schlesinger’s kiln can handle—and shaped fastidiously by hand, which is to say slowly. That’s the way the artist, who was born in Los Angeles in 1948 and now lives between Manhattan and Long Island, likes it.

Untitled by Peter Schlesinger (2021). Courtesy of Tristan Hoare and PAD London.

Clouds by Peter Schlesinger (2021). Courtesy of Tristan Hoare and PAD London.

Enamoured with art history, he builds his work with the measured pace of tradition, manipulating clay to invent original objects d’art that reference stone, bronze, and ironwork forms found in antiquity. While Schlesinger’s study of his eastern and western ceramic artist forebears is apparent, his sculptures sound out an alphabet that is entirely the potter’s own.

Tristan Hoare has an established relationship with the artist, previously exhibiting his work in two group exhibitions—Folds and Cracked, both in 2021—as well as two solo presentations, including a 2021 show interrupted by the pandemic and, most recently, The Language of Vessels, which ran from April to May of this year and will have a reprisal during PAD London. In this edition of the show, Schlesinger’s works will be complemented by pieces from London-based Japanese artist Kaori Tatebayashi, who makes delicate sculptures that resemble fossilized flowers.

The U.S. artist is no stranger to London, having studied painting at the Slade School of Art when he moved to the U.K. in 1968 with his partner at the time, artist David Hockney. As an artist’s model, Schlesinger is immortalized as a handsome, floppy-haired young man in works by Hockney such as Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures), 1972, which broke auction records in 2018 by realizing a price of $90.3 million at Christie’s. Schlesinger has published two photography monographs that are a sumptuous record of his life from the 1960s to late ’80s and the people and places that shaped it, including the Rolling Stones, Manolo Blahnik, Cecil Beaton, and of course Hockney.

Untitled by Peter Schlesinger (2021). Courtesy of Tristan Hoare and PAD London.

Untitled by Peter Schlesinger (2021). Courtesy of Tristan Hoare and PAD London.

Finding his calling in ceramics, Schlesinger pivoted away from painting and photography and has been exhibiting his sculptures since the early 1990s. PAD London visitors will have the opportunity to encounter yet another side to the accomplished artist as Schlesinger’s wall-mounted ceramics and works on paper are presented alongside his signature vessels. See stoneware tiles adorned with meandering lines that recall the abstract patterns of tunnels carved out by ants, and gestural depictions of pottery executed with quick confidence in splashes of ink on paper. All told, the exhibition will assemble an in-depth survey of Schlesinger’s work that spans three decades.

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