By Virginie Chumier-Layen

Historical forms revisited, with a palette of striking colors: the world of Maxwell Mustardo is a hybrid, unique, and often humorous. He is a ceramicist whose formal, chromatic and textural approach transcends the limits of the material.

Born in 1993, in Pittstown (New Jersey, United States).
Lives and works in Quakertown (New Jersey, United States).

Holder of a double degree in visual arts and art history and theory, obtained in 2017 at the New York State College of Ceramics, at Alfred University, Maxwell Mustardo discovered the potential of ceramics during his last years of study. But for this young talent, courted by numerous international galleries, it all started when he was a child. His parents are photography conservators who passed on to him a taste for objects, museums, and artists' studios. He grew up in Quakertown, in a house very near the studio of renowned ceramicist Toshiko Takaezu (1922-2011). There, he discovered “what the life of a ceramist is. The contemporary and artistic approach to the material of this pioneer of American ceramics had a great impact on me” he explains. “Since fall 2021, I have permanently settled here, in her old studio, when I am not in residence elsewhere.”

ARCHETYPAL FORMS AND A CONTEMPORARY PALETTE

In his studio, imbued with the memory of Toshiko Takaezu, Maxwell Mustardo alternates periods of contemplation, research and uninterrupted production. From the beginning, he approached his medium from the perspective of its most primordial aspects. On his potter's wheel, he turns the clay, or simply gives substance to a shape, by stacking coils that he scrapes and sands. This is followed by a first firing at 930°C, preceding an internal glazing phase, then a second firing at 1,260°C. A true obsessive, he simultaneously prepares a multitude of pieces. Currently, in his workshop, more than twenty medium sizes are awaiting a first firing, while forty larger sizes await glazing. A final series of thirty fired works are about to receive a PVC coating. “In the workshop, I make my enamels, then, every two hours, I run to the garage to do a series of sprays on my finalized shapes. I then return to the workshop to place another series of coils on top of those in progress. Then I sand, fire, glaze, and so on. It’s a bit of a mess, but it’s logical and pleasant!”

His shapes are archetypal: they are amphoras, craters, pitchers, vases, mugs, pots or toroids, to which he gives a singular texture. A surface with a mossy, almost sugared appearance characterizes this body of work, including pitchers, “anthropophorae” and toroids. A smoother finish is used for works that have a soft, even dripping appearance, such as those from the “Flablets” series. Another form that he calls “shot glasses” has prickly, raised surface, giving it a lively organic appearance. All this results from surface treatments in explosive colors, which have become his signature. To this end he uses a wide variety of glazes, acrylics, PVC, and micaceous iron oxides. For the anthropophorae forms, he typically paints and sprays the surface with liquid PVC several times. For others, like the blue and white tulipiere forms, he is inspired by the technique of Chinese iridescent lacquer, also used by the American ceramist Kenneth Price, and which we find in the Californian DIY culture. Sprayed in many layers on the surface of the tulipieres, their delicately sanded surfaces reveal an elegant play of chromatic streaks. Finally, with the shot glasses, Maxwell creates each protruding nodule one by one on the narrow forms that he finds to be appropriate for the spikey texture, and vice versa. When available glazes are not suitable, he formulates new ones that are.

INTERACTION BETWEEN NATURE AND CULTURE

Saturated, iridescent, and very contemporary, his colors pop. His pieces are adorned with blue tones, mauve tones with green nuances, purplish reflections, flashy orange or metallic blacks. In other words, an often lively and heightened range of tones drawn from nature and contemporary culture, contrasting with the historical references of the forms on which they are applied. “This orange color is standard for safety at construction sites,” he explains, “as it is linked to aposematic colors, in other words those displayed by plants or animals to signal their toxicity. I like to play on the interaction between nature and culture, between the jungle and the city.’

Maxwell Mustardo works tirelessly on his almost alchemical production, both in Quakertown and in regular residencies. At the Mendocino Art Center, in California, or at the New Harmony Clay Project, in Indiana, he produces “modernist” pieces, in his words. But this ceramist from New Jersey is equally comfortable exploring other eras, cultures, and the history of art, particularly when at residencies like in 2021 at the c.r.e.t.a., in Rome, or, two years later, in Versailles. During the latter residency offered by the Parisian gallery Lefebvre & Fils, he reexamined his formal repertoire in the light of the history of local art and ceramics. “Working in a workshop near the castle was ideal for immersing myself in the works of the 18th century in France. Stimulated by the renewed interest in Antiquity, the ceramists of the Sèvres factory of the time sought to produce new objects, often excessive, intended for the wealthy class, but also to eclipse the porcelain imported from East Asia. My pieces were inspired, among other things, by Roman amphorae, monumental Greek craters, the tulipiers of Delft, in addition to key objects of the French Rococo movement, such as the potpourris of Sèvres.” In order to avoid any resemblance to the originals, he emancipated them from their historicist conventions, taking anachronistic liberties with the connections between volume, texture and color.

Curious and erudite, Maxwell Mustardo continues to push the limits of the medium by rethinking its materiality. Citing the American masters Peter Voulkos or Kenneth Price, his non-functional and playful pieces, like the toroid shape in the color of a traffic cone, or the anthropomorphic amphorae dressed in biomorphic chromatism, play on contrasts and hybrid references. Between hardness and softness, between pop culture and high culture of art history, Maxwell Mustardo offers a refreshing vision of ceramics which he describes as “gluttonous and luxuriant”!