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Dean Adams, b. 1966, Ceramic Artist

Dean Adams works with visual satire, people who view his work are not quite sure what to do with political or sexual related art. For years Adams has created ceramic sculptures that consist of the male anatomy sculpted and conjoined to a bird’s body. Far from lurid, they take on a sense of humor with titles that entertain.

The Montana ceramic artist seems to operate on a sliding scale between kitsch/whimsy, cultural attitudes on sexuality, and highbrow Dada/Surrealism. On the far end of the scale, his works look straight out of a dime store, figurines that are colorful, look inexpensive as if they were produced right after World War II. In the center there is a salute to Freud’s complex understanding of sexual expression. Then on the other far end, the works take on Dada/Surrealist origins, when he combines figures with penises and penis heads.

Another element happens within the range of Adams' works, shock artistry. For those who know his work can just imagine a naïve grandmother at the museum gift store shopping for Christmas tree ornaments. There are these cute handmade colorful porcelain birds, she picks up a couple and gets them home, and low and behold she discovers that her little birds have penis heads. The grandmother is stunned, which is Adams’ version of shock artistry, the element of surprise, which is the Dada/Surrealist element of Adams’ work. He plays with humor and whimsy when he titles his works, including a pair of Salt and Pecker Shakers or a Deep Throated Warbler with a long penis neck and penis head on a bird body.

I’ll
"Love Birds"
Signed DA 2002/Ceramic/Titled
Dean Adams
  
Adams’ undergraduate and graduate degrees would have introduced him to Marcel Duchamp the Dada artist who also used similar metaphor techniques.  Duchamp once took a urinal and signed it R. Mutt and titled it "Fountain".  Likewise, while Duchamp was living in Paris in 1919, he drew a mustache and goatee on a mass-produced color reproduction of Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa (1513-1517), replacing the text below with "LHOOQ".  When asked the significance of the inscription, Duchamp stated that it was a "very risqué joke on the Gioconda [Mona Lisa]" that occurred when the letters read in French sounded like: "Elle a chaud au cul," loosely translated by Duchamp as "There is a fire down below."  Adams and Duchamp have both used anarchic impulses and a sense of mischievousness with wordplay, sexual references and gender bending identity inversion (poking fun of the roles of men and women).  

Duchamp shocked Paris with his altered Mona Lisa just like Adams' birds today can be a shocker for a grandma.  Surrealism is a direct outgrowth of Dada, and Surrealism was influenced by the studies and theories of Sigmund Freud within the deep layers of the human mind. A popular book by Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams was instrumental to Surrealism. Today we think of Surrealism as an art movement that features elements of surprise, unexpected juxtapositions and non sequitur. Those elements are all part of Adams’ work.

It is those unexpected juxtapositions that have us wondering what is going on here. A bird, chicken or play toy smooshed together so uniformly with a human penis is an unexpected assemblage. In his London exhibit at Siegfried Contemporary the gallery provided a most interesting insight to Adams’ work: “By detaching the penis from realistic human form and re-contextualizing with the bird form he creates a new paradigm for a contemporary world. He de-erotizes the penis and celebrates maleness in a playful, humorous way that permits viewers to let their guard down….the viewer [ gets to] considers the penis, maleness, homosexuality, heterosexuality, bisexuality that is unhindered by the human form”.

A short visit to his office one day had me startled, looking up on top of a high cabinet, there were numerous ceramic penises each with no scrotum appendages; some enormous, others were normal and perhaps others were too small to notice. Did all these various examples serve as potential model replacements for a flying toothless beaked hinged jaw? Later, it made me wonder, are these hand carved, plaster-slip cast, self-portraits, or does he have friends pose? In some of his latest works he creates penis chandeliers and candelabras.  Is this another play of Surrealism, by having lit candles drip wax onto carved ceramic penises? Perhaps he has not contemplated his sculptures in an Alfred Kinsey manner, instead creating the visions deep within his mind that have a touch of humor.

Adams is handsome, frequently dons a farmer’s tan with a ready smile, and is ebullient and garrulous. Born in California, raised in Billings, he attended college at University of Montana, but got his undergraduate degree from Montana State University (MSU). His MFA is from University of Iowa. He has taught at MSU for several years in the School of Art, served as the Center Director for MSU’s Faculty Excellence, and currently serves as the Dean of the College of Arts and Architecture. He has had several notable exhibits including the Siegfried Contemporary in London, and his work has sold at Sotheby’s London, 2016. Examples of his works has been published in such books as: Sex Pots: Eroticism in Ceramics; written by Paul Mathieu. He is married and is the father of two children.

References:
Mathieu, Paul, Sex Pots: Eroticism in Ceramics, Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick, NJ, 2003
Exhibit Notes: Siegfried Contemporary (Gallery), London
Interview(s) with Dean Adams

Other Examples:



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©2022. Waller-Yoblonsky Fine Arts Blogspot 

Waller-Yoblonsky Fine Art is a research collaborative, working to track artists that got lost and overlooked due to time, changing styles, race, gender and/or sexual orientation. Our frequent blogs highlight artists and art movements that need renewed attention with improved information for the researcher and art collectors. The blog was created by Mr. Waller and all written materials were obtained by the Fair Use Section 107, of The Copyright Act. #waller-yoblonskyblogspot #walleryoblonskyblogspot #DeanAdamsCeramics #contemporyceramicsculptures
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