Amber Rane Sibley

Fierman presents the New York debut solo exhibition of ceramicist Amber Rane Sibley entitled All That Is and More Below. Sibley’s figurative sculptures, rendered through a masterful array of ceramic techniques, inhabit a fantastical world of ambiguous psychosexual interaction. Comprised of both single figures and intertwined pairs or groups, the landscape of the exhibition is a psychogeography steeped in the visual language of both fairy tales and spiritual ritual. Sibley’s exploration of the visceral potentials of ceramic evinces a sophisticated melding of form and image; the organic strangeness of clay mirrors the biological excesses of human experience.

In Muliebral Canker, Sibley has constructed an arm-less, nude female figure kneeling, either praying, exhausted, in a position of sexual submission, or melting into herself. The figure’s pink-hued, glossy skin is marked with both white and purple marks, frozen in viscous motion, perhaps dripping from the bubbling veil enshrouding her head. A swath of glaze on her leg mimics her barnacled veil; a living woman undergoes a chemical crystallization. In several of her works, for example Intransigent and Generous Helping #1, Sibley presents two figures, one animal-like standing on all fours, the other lying beneath face-up. In many instances drips of candy-like ceramic glaze connect the two figures in a symbiotic and liquidy exchange.

Sibley’s motley crew cohere through her virtuosic use of firing and glazing techniques. The sculptures are all high-fired stoneware, often fired multiple times, and Sibley employs a variety of construction methods, including the wheel, slip-casting, hand-building, and slab and coil construction. She fabricates all of her own glazes, imbuing chemical experimentation with a voluptuous vitality.

Amber Rane Sibley (b. 1988, Cape Cod, MA) lives and works in New York. She received a BFA from Hunter College in 2021. Fierman will present more of her new sculptures in collaboration with Situations at the NADA New York art fair in May 2022.