Isabel Wynn: Harmonious Destruction

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Isabel Wynn, “Monochrome Reverie 4,” 2024, ceramic, 19" x 20" x 19" (photo courtesy of Equinox Gallery)

Ceramicist Isabel Wynn recounts a story from her student days in which a colleague accidentally knocked over a pot on which she had been working for some time. Rather than being devastated, she “looked on the bright side” and came to realize the role destruction could play in her work. 

The accident inspired her to begin collapsing, deforming, and pushing her materials, actions that contribute to the ruined yet beautiful forms of her large-scale vessels. Six of her recent works are on view until March 16 at Equinox Gallery, where her engagement with unruly forces can be observed.

Since graduating from Emily Carr University in 2020, Wynn has honed her skills as a maker of large ceramic vessels, which approximate the size and scale of her own torso. Making connections between her body and her work, she generates a physical response to the vulnerability, intimacy, and pathos of her forms. 

Her process involves wheel-throwing forms with extremely thin walls, which are unstable, a condition she exploits through folding, poking, tearing, or crimping the skin-like clay. She hangs unfired pots upside-down to stretch or distort them and protects interior volumes from collapse by inserting and inflating balloons. 

Some pots are gently pushed off their bases to balance precariously on their sides. In several, bottoms are deeply cracked, torn apart, or missing, suggesting subterranean forces at work. These manipulations reveal Wynn’s innate sensitivity to form and volume. Although her work might seem to be the result of chance, she clearly operates with a high degree of control.

Wynn’s technical skills are further on display in her glazing, which shifts the focus from form to surface. Reactive glazes create variegated surfaces of great interest, and, in this exhibition, black and white dominate to create harmonious relationships between individual works. Glazes drip and pool in crevices formed by folded walls, and transitions between inside and outside are elided through the use of the same glaze throughout. Her glaze treatments enhance her forms and generate a sense of drama.

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Isabel Wynn, “Monochrome Reverie 1,” 2023, ceramic, 19" x 16" x 15 1/2" (photo courtesy of Equinox Gallery)

In some works, the application of contrasting glaze creates abstract imagery. Monochrome Reverie 1 (2023) is coated in a shiny white glaze over which a thin black dribble suggests a wandering doodle. Monochrome Reverie 4 (2024), the largest and most volumetric of the works, is covered in matte black glaze and marked with white, tooth-shaped patches around the rim. Below, white splashes give way to gravity, stretching downward and thinning so that the black substrate bubbles through in a series of dots. Heavy drips circle the bottom, grounding the form in a convincing manner. 

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Isabel Wynn, “Untitled from the Crater Series,” 2023, ceramic, 16" x 15" x 12" (photo courtesy of Equinox Gallery)

Several works are pitted and scarred with volcanic glaze, which erupts into violent patterns and textures. Untitled from the Crater Series (2023) balances on its ruined base like a crouching animal. Its pale, pitted surface is splattered with puddles of crusty stuff, suggesting weathered rocks or sea coral. Black and white stripes of lace-like craters echo the vertical thrust of Tentando (2023), while a more delicate surface of tiny pockmarks covers Monochrome Reverie 2 (2023). This deliciously rotund pot shelters a dark, mysterious interior barely visible through a crimped and gathered rim.

Wynn’s sculptural vessels wear their confidence and intentionality well. As with much contemporary ceramics internationally, they marry form and technology, awareness of history, and individual expression. They reflect feminist concerns with the body, imperfection, and agency, while exhibiting a nuanced response to material and process. As articulate objects, they evoke a range of emotional, conceptual, and aesthetic responses. In this, they confirm the enduring legacy of vessels as carriers of meaning. ■

Isabel Wynn is on view until March 16 at Equinox Gallery, Vancouver.

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