Roger Herman: From California With Love

Herman is known for his polyphonous orchestrations that embrace imperfection and incompleteness, in a practice that has evolved over five decades. Featuring recent works produced from 2015 onwards, the exhibition celebrates the gestural, spontaneous vibrancy of Herman’s colourful creations, illustrating why he came to be known as the West Coast parallel of 1980s neo-Expressionism.

At the core of the exhibition is a series of dynamic and multifaceted handcrafted ceramic pieces sculpted from wheel-thrown clay, which exude energy and highlight the artist’s experimental approach.

More than functional vases, the irregular shapes, spontaneous voids and protrusions of these pieces transcend traditional ceramic design techniques, with vibrant, quickly executed expressionistic compositions applied beneath glossy glazes. Evoking a unique and unpredictable painterly expression that celebrates imperfection, spontaneity and intuition, each piece is marked by an approach that treats the clay as a blank canvas, allowing brush strokes, dashes and lines to build texture and colour in innovative ways.