San Francisco Jim Melchert Gallery 16
by Barbara Morris
The centuries old practice of Kintsugi, a Japanese technique of mending broken pottery with gold, honors the flaws in the ceramic piece, venerating the cracks as signs of age and use. The artist Jim Melchert, who taught English in Japan for four years, has long appreciated and employed that aesthetic. For more than thirty years he has worked with prefabricated ceramic floor tiles, which he breaks, reassembles, then marks with glaze. His meditative attention to the cracks elicits a careful and deft response, hinging on an element of randomness and chance, reflecting in his work the important influence of John Cage.
The recent survey of his conceptually driven work, “Rethink, Revisit, Reassess, Reenter,” includes pieces dating from the 1970s onward.
An iconic figure on the Bay Area arts scene since the 1960s, the artist studied at UC Berkeley with ceramic firebrand Peter Voulkos, earning a second MFA in ceramics in 1961—he already held an MFA in painting from the University of Chicago, and a BA in Art History from Princeton. Energized by meeting Bay Area artists William Wiley and Bruce Nauman, Melchert soon expanded his practice.
The exhibition primarily features wall-mounted ceramic tile works, but also drawings, sculptures, and films. Two of the films included in the exhibition are of particular interest. In Changes, Amsterdam (1972), Melchert and a group of plucky participants dunk their heads in a washtub of clay slip, then sit quietly on a bench as the muck drips and congeals on their faces. The large-scale projection of Untitled (The Water Film) (1973), directed by Melchert and filmed by Peter Ogilvie, features nude performers frolicking before a white drop cloth, flinging buckets of water at each other in a playful homage to Muybridge’s motion studies.
The right side of the large gallery is filled with a grouping of materially and thematically related tile works. North Atlantic (2005) is an immersive work at 90” x 72”, a five by four grid of 18” tiles that employs wavering bands of deep blue glaze suggestive of the sea and conjures hypnotic rhythms on the gray tiles. The feeling is meditative, conveying a serene effect. Melchert’s most recent works are smaller in scale, brilliantly hued, and joyous, such as Shards Speaking for the Group (2021).
In 1977, Melchert was invited to direct the Visual Arts Program at the NEA in Washington, DC, where he remained for 4 years. After a few years back in the Bay Area, he headed to Italy where he directed the American Academy in Rome from 1984 to 1988. These posts clearly speak to Melchert’s prodigious gifts as a teacher, mentor, and facilitator. At 91, Jim Melchert remains passionate about art—his own, and that of others. His continuing ability to shape and mold the contours of our art world remains fully as much an expression of his creativity as his diverse and remarkable art practice.
Jim Melchert: “Rethink, Revisit, Reassess, Reenter” closed December 18 at Gallery 16, SF.
This review was originally published in the Nov/Dec 2021 issue of Artillery magazine.