Joël Brodovsky-Adams

Joël Brodovsky-Adams is a queer ceramicist originally from Winnipeg, Manitoba. His work consists of wheel-thrown forms with highly patterned and decorated surfaces. Joël took up ceramics in 2013 at a community studio called L’aluminé in Montreal, Quebec where he studied with ceramicists Marko Savard and Jennifer Wicks. He completed a post-bachelors studio certificate at NSCAD University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. More recently, he completed his MFA in ceramics at the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University. Joël has several exhibition credits throughout Canada and abroad, including a group show at the Canadian Clay and Glass Gallery in Waterloo, Ontario; a group show at Thrown Contemporary in London, England; a public installation for the Nocturne Festival in Halifax; a solo show at Studio 21 Fine Art in Halifax which represented the culmination of his work from a three-month residency at Guldagergaard International Ceramic Research Center in Skælskør, Denmark. He was also the third prize recipient in the AX National Emerging Artist Exhibition in Sussex, New Brunswick.

My work is an exercise in indulgence. It stands in the face of austerity that frames pleasure as a frivolous, valueless pursuit. My studio practice is deeply rooted in process - everything is constructed using the wheel. Process generates a visual vocabulary determined by very specific ways of manipulating material. The works themselves function as furniture: table, lamp, stool. My current research radiates out from a particular family of forms, dictated by a set of anatomical rules. Evoking the body, they are edgeless, closed volumes with two ends that fold in upon themselves. The forms are versatile: they are joints, modules, anchors. Often made up of components, each assemblage depends upon a version of this form. I also construct appendages to enhance composition and expand their utility. The works possess a certain theatricality, both as animated characters in and of themselves and as invitations to anticipate the happenings that surround them. While much of the work alludes to the domestic or private space, it also references public furnishings and the starkly different rules of engagement that accompany the public context. One particular public context dominates my thinking: the Queer Club. Queerness frames pleasure as something valuable despite the absence of conventional productivity and the Queer Club is a space where it is bountiful and prioritized. This work confronts a culture that relentlessly positions labour over life, productivity over pleasure.