"Figure Out: Catastrophe or Regeneration" 

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10 September – 20 December 2026

Alfred Ceramic Art Museum

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Alfred Ceramic Art Museum is delighted to announce the exhibition “Figure Out: Catastrophe or Regeneration” by Paolo Porelli.

The centerpiece of the exhibition will showcase over 60 statuettes of wildly diverse and idiosyncratic characters sparked by strange intuitions and a fervent imagination. Some have faces entirely obscured by sausages or mops or flowers. Some appear to wear unorthodox scuba gear or magic hats. Some carry thunderbolts or mirrors or mysterious orbs. Some appear to be slowly dissolving, or perhaps evolving, like either cemetery statues being covered in moss or futuristic humans developing radical mutations. Their titles hint at their occupations and range from ordinary to the bizarre. We meet shepherds, musicians, and flower sellers, but also smokers, radioactive workers, magicians, and mutants. In each case we are given a definite persona, a character from an unwritten myth.

An Italian based in Rome, his partner in both art and life is the art historian Lori-Ann Touchette, who specializes in classical Greek and Roman art. It comes as no surprise, therefore, that his work draws on and elaborates figurative forms in the tradition of classical Italian statuary. Also very much present are styles and tropes found in ancient Greek and Roman mythology: the gods and goddesses, heroes and villains, monsters and marvels that populated the ancient stories that gave meaning to their world. For decades Porelli has developed a dizzying collection of eclectic, surreal figures that invite us to inhabit a contemporary mythology whose stories have not yet been told.

Porelli sees the work in “Figure Out: Catastrophe or Regeneration” as a way of turning his mythological menagerie towards the current ecological moment, which he sees as one of both Catastrophe and Regeneration. He describes the ambiguity of his figures ­­— some seemingly on the verge of collapse while others seem to be transforming into something new — as reflective of this moment. Will regenerative forces overcome the powers leading us to catastrophe? Or is collapse inevitable at this point? Alternatively, we can view catastrophe and regeneration as constantly conjoined phenomena, the natural creative and destructive forces of the universe. Perhaps Porelli’s creations are the beings that might come into existence in the wake of catastrophe, the regenerating mutants that have emerged from the rubble our civilization left behind? However they are read, as harbingers of hope or doom, or as fantasies of a postapocalyptic future, perhaps the most important gift Porelli’s work gives us is the hope in the power of the human imagination, the sense that mythmaking stretches deep into the past but also far into the future.

Also on view will be the debut of Porelli’s most recent series “Black Iconology.” Larger and more visually homogenous than the others, these figures reveal Porelli’s delight in and mastery of his materials. His glaze gives the work the appearance of metal, somewhere between a shimmering silver and a heavy lead. They too seem to occupy a position between growth and decay, as though discovered in an Atlantean shipwreck but then polished back into life. The figures here are even more complex, and take on an altar-worthy gravitas, as reflected by some of their titles: Confucius, Minerva, Penelope. Collectively they form an excellent counterbalance to the occasional whimsy of Porelli’s other work.

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Benjamin Evans

The Wayne Higby Director and Principal Curator

Alfred Ceramic Art Museum

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