Plasticakes and Gore Orbs

Paul Nudd's fifth show at Western Exhibitions, _Plasticakes and Gore Orbs,_ is overrun by outrageously crafted and colored mutant ceramic heads. Nudd's artistic output — paintings, prints, drawings, video, sculpture, installations, zines, publishing projects —over the past twenty years is prolific and protean and yet, this is first ever show devoted solely to ceramics. Nudd has been committed to central themes of primal sludge, growth and disease, systems of classification, mutation and life, patterning and mark making, all of which are evident in his hilariously garish ceramic sculptures. _Plasticakes and Gore Orbs_ will open with a public reception on Friday, November 6 from 5 to 8pm and will run through December 19. Gallery hours are 11am to 6pm, Tuesday to Saturday. Hand-built and heavily pockmarked, Paul Nudd's recent foray into the world of clay has yielded a host of cartoon-inspired entities: little hand-molded beings, each one, that are all together stressed, maniacal, and demented… collapsing under their own hilarity and fleshy folds. In the studio, the clay seems to want to form itself into these dubious heroes. As always, mutation and decomposition are abundant here, not only as a physical aspect of the work, but as a pop-cultural, quasi-conceptual framework. With a multitude of references to the heavily textured and visceral forms of 80's junk culture, each piece caricatures formal exaggeratedness. Some of these heads are sprouting more little heads. Or using heads as hats. The lines between absorption and expurgation blur. The color schemes are truly multi-colored, a significant departure in relation to older work.