Alex Reed at Marta

On view: September 12–October 20, 2019

Marta is a new storefront in Highland Park dedicated to applied arts, whose mission is to bridge the spaces between design and art, gallery and domestic. Their inaugural show is by ceramic artist Alex Reed, whose project International Ceramics Friendship Park also seeks to act as a bridge between the past and imagined future. The exhibition includes beautifully glazed ceramic objects such as a series of works titled Puzzles that feature blobby ceramic forms nestled together to fit within a rectangular indentation on a wooden tablet. The idea general idea of a puzzle—that the player must create order out of randomness—is taken more literally in a central architectural model that acts as the center point of the exhibition. The model, also called International Ceramics Friendship Park, details an imagined utopia that is centered around craftspeople. Pulling inspiration from the field of ceramics as well as past utopian models (such as the Bauhaus school), Reed’s crafted suggestion—complete with named sites within the park that are dedicated to ceramic movements and artists—imagines a world where artists and designers are central to the organization of a society, instead of pushed to the fringes.