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An Exhibition of Peter Schlesinger’s Ceramics Inaugurates a Playful New Gallery in Hollywood, Vogue Mariposa Opens in Hollywoodland with Peter Schlesinger, WhiteHot Magazine

INFORMATION

Mariposa is pleased to announce the opening of its Los Angeles gallery, located in the historic Hollywoodland Realty building at 2700 Beachwood Drive in Hollywood. For its inaugural exhibition, the gallery will present a new body of ceramic sculptures by Peter Schlesinger (b. 1948, Los Angeles). This marks the artist’s first solo exhibition in Los Angeles in over ten years, and a return to the city where he was born and began his artistic career. 

Throughout his practice, Schlesinger integrates figurative elements drawn from mythology and fable—octopi, trees, and birds—alongside vessels that echo ancient forms and enigmatic biomorphic shapes. Initially trained as a painter, Schlesinger began working with ceramic sculpture in the 1980s after returning to New York from a formative decade in London. During this period, while studying at the Slade School of Art and immersing himself in the city’s cultural milieu, Schlesinger photographed many of the leading cultural figures of the time including Cecil Beaton, Ossie Clark, Amanda Lear, and Andy Warhol. His ceramics reflect a sensibility shaped by this moment: innovative approaches to texture and color, held in balance with references to both modernism, antiquity, bohemianism, and formalism.

The works presented in this exhibition take as their point of departure the flocks of birds that migrate through Schlesinger’s garden in Bellport, New York. The elongated necks of Canadian Geese and Trumpeter Swans are translated into elegant handles for delicate vessels, their attenuated curves lending the works both grace and tension. These forms evoke a long tradition of ceremonial animal-shaped drinking and pouring vessels, which emerged during the Bronze Age and persisted across cultures—from the Mediterranean world to Islamic ceramics and fine Chinese porcelain. At the same time, they return to motifs central to Schlesinger’s earliest ceramic experiments, in which avian necks and open beaks formed the mouth of the vessel itself.

A related group of works features glazes in soft shades of green, evoking the tonal subtlety of Chinese celadon ware. As throughout Schlesinger’s practice, historical reference is balanced with contemporary interventions. In one vessel, a checkerboard glaze introduces a graphic, modernist motif; in another, black horizontal bands appear almost viscous, as though still wet, seeping into one another across the surface. Two works incorporate botanical imagery: delicately painted vines climb the bodies of the vessels and spill outward from their openings, a quiet reflection of the artist’s longstanding gardening practice in Bellport. In these pieces, the vessel bodies and handles subtly suggest the silhouette of a female figure with arms raised overhead, further pressing against the boundary between abstraction and figuration.

The exhibition will open on Saturday, February 21, with a reception from 12-7pm.

Peter Schlesinger (b. 1948, Los Angeles) lives and works between Bellport, New York and New York City. He studied painting at the University of California, Los Angeles, before continuing his education at London’s Slade School of Art in the late 1960s and early 1970s. He began making sculpture in New York in the early 1980s. Schlesinger’s work has been exhibited at Mariposa, Paris; Sperone Westwater, New York; Gallery Met, New York; Flag Art Foundation, New York; the Parrish Art Museum, Water Mill, NY; David Lewis Gallery, New York; Paula Cooper Gallery, New York; MoMA PS1, New York; The Clocktower, New York; Tate Liverpool, UK; and the Hayward Gallery, London. His work is held in collections including the Arts Council Collection, London; the Farnsworth Museum, Rockland, ME; Manchester Art Gallery, UK; the Parrish Art Museum; and the UBS Art Collection, New York.