Yage Wang

The Jane Hartsook Gallery at Greenwich House Pottery is pleased to present new ceramic sculpture by Yage Wang. In Lie Low, Wang investigates form by repeating a single motif: a dead cockroach. Creating each individual bug challenged Wang to explore how the same form could be shaped, manipulated, and experienced in a new way. Legs become sharp blades or puffs of cotton candy; the antennae turn into giant horns or delicate crowns, the wings are at times a flower, an airplane, a dumpling. The essential elements of a cockroach are bulked up or stripped away in endless variations.

The small scale of these sculptures shows every gesture and tool mark captured by the clay, imbuing them with the touch and emotions of their maker. Viewers' initial impulse to recoil at the sight of a cockroach is quickly superseded by curiosity, even empathy. Close examination reveals each bug to be uniquely expressive and complex, a universe all its own. Their strangeness soon falls away. Their bodies become mirrors for our bodies; their feelings reflections of our own.

Wang is a New York-based artist. He earned his MFA in ceramics from SUNY, New Paltz and his BA in studio art and biology from Brandeis University. He has shown his work nationally, including at Hudson River Museum (Yonkers, NY; 2024), American Museum of Ceramic Art (Pomona, CA; 2024), Peep Projects (Philadelphia, PA; 2024), Sculpture Space NYC (Queens, NY; 2023), and Asya Geisberg Gallery (New York, NY; 2021). Recent awards include the Sandra Shea '56 Fisher Prize for Exceptional Achievement in the Creative Arts and the Remis Grant for the Arts.