Diane Rosenstein Gallery is pleased to announce Lost Words, an installation of new ceramics by Jay Kvapil. Based in Long Beach, Kvapil is a potter who explores the tension between the abject and the beautiful and balances minimal forms with spectacular glazes that melt, fuse, bubble, crawl, and drip in the heat of the kiln. This is his third exhibition with the gallery.

Kvapil’s abstract glazes allude to the landscape -- he grew up in Arizona, a land of vast desert landscapes, but rich in intimate pictorial spaces found in small rocks and stones. Many pieces in this exhibition have an obvious horizon line, while others depict the subtle space through which we travel – whether literally or in our minds --without a specific reference. From his studio at California State University Long Beach (CSULB), he creates his custom glazes through hundreds of tests, and the final pieces often the results of a dozen separate firings. He describes himself as more of a cook than a chemist, adding a pinch here and a pinch there.

The artist writes, "In the end, what I make is pottery just pottery. I’m not interested in calling it ceramic art or sculptural ceramics. It’s pottery, plain and simple, because that is the language that it speaks and the history from which it comes, and to whom it speaks. If my work is successful, I like to think that it is kind of conversation with potters that came before me, and the ones who will come after. "

Jay Kvapil (USA, b. 1951) graduated from University of the Pacific, Stockton, CA (1973) and received his MA (1979) and MFA (1981) at San Jose State University in California. He was included in Transfigured. (2018) and The Seven Year Itch (2019) at Diane Rosenstein Gallery. His ceramics have been shown at the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC; the Oakland Museum, Oakland, CA; Scripps College Invitational, Claremont, CA; Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Taiwan, Galerie LeFebvre et Fils, Paris; Mindy Solomon Gallery, Miami; Couturier Gallery, Los Angeles; and numerous other national and international exhibitions. Jay Kvapil was the Director of the School of Art at California State University, Long Beach (CSULB), and Dean of the Mike Curb College of Art, Media and Communications at California State University in Northridge (CSUN) from 2014-15. The artist lives and works in Long Beach, CA.