Kaiju

Jasmine Little is a painter who also creates ceramic pieces featuring intricate carvings of vegetal patterns, antique urnsand slender mythological figures. Her personal approach to painting and ceramics has brought her international recognition for her work that draws inspiration from a variety of art styles ranging from Greek pottery to medieval manuscripts, Flemish Renaissance painting, Dutch 16th-century still lifes, Safavid period carpets, and Japanese woodblock prints. The artist steeps herself in the international history of cultural imagery and then allows memory, chance, and instinct to influence the resulting artworks.

Little’s stoneware and earthenware vessels (hand-built with porcelain inlay, carved, glazed, and then carved again once fired) are often decorated with references from Western art history. The classical Greek black-figure pottery (especially common between the 7th and 5th centuries BC) and red-figure pottery (developed in Athens around 520 BC and in use until the late 3rd century AD) ceramics from antiquity, in particular, seem to serve as a recognisable direct source of inspiration.

The contemporary free handling in which she depicts these images (especially human figures), however, also links Little to some of the greatest artists of the 20th century. Comparisons could for example easily be made to Fauvist painters like Henri Matisse (1869–1954, French visual artist, known for both his use of colour and his fluid and original draughtsmanship).

Through her use of familiar sculptural shapes and classical carving forms, Little elicits a broad sense of iconography,creating a blank canvas of sorts onto which viewers can cast a subjective gaze towards the almost universal human practice of marking time through artistic and functional object representation. Through her meticulous research and dedication to the tradition of form, Little creates a dialogue threading through the dialogue of art historical imagery and its subjective and objective influence on contemporary work today.

Little’s works, thus, inspire a sense of community, as well as awareness of humanity, in the viewer through their perennial nature and roots in various artistic movements throughout history.

Kaiju (executed circa 2023) bears a strong resemblance to the, approximately, fourteen ceramic vessels that were on display in Little’s 2024 solo exhibition, Jasmine Little: The Olive Garden, at Nina Johnson, Miami, Florida, U.S.A. The exhibited pieces, like Kaiju, were decorated and adorned with relief renderings of antique Greco-Roman vessels. In conjunction with the exhibition, Nina Johnson wrote:

The exhibition emphasizes Little’s skillful technique of melding varied art historical and archival references across mediums, evoking a visual representation of the passing of time and the entirety of the human experience. Little is best known for her body of ceramic work created over the past five years, characterized by their handcrafted cylindrical stoneware form and hand carved exteriors inlaid with figurative iconography.

Ahead of the exhibition, Little also gave the following statement about her recent ceramic production in a press release:

Every work is created in one shot, so everything on the surface represents time passing in the making of the works. I want the works to remain accessible and relatable so the basic shapes, the painterliness of application, and the functional aspect of the ceramics suggest to the viewer the ability to interact with the objects or the idea of making them. Making objects and decorating objects is one of the most basic human things to do, and I take pleasure in being in the general lineage of humans who exist and make objects as time passes.

Provenance

La Loma Projects, Los Angeles, California, U.S.A.

Firestorm Foundation (acquired from the above).

Copyright Firestorm Foundation