By Emily McDermott
Despite growing up in Chelsea, artist Francesca DiMattio didn't encounter contemporary art until later in life. As a child, she did, however, frequent museums. "I would go home and made fake Jasper Johns's when the Jasper Johns show happened, and I loved the Degas show at the Met," she says over breakfast on a Sunday morning. "I just ate it all up, and whatever it was, I made versions of it." Now, DiMattio creates ceramic sculptures that range from two to 10-feet tall and large-scale oil paintings, while dividing her time between the same Chelsea building in which she grew up, a studio space in Brooklyn, and a newly built home and studio in upstate New York.
Currently on view at Pippy Houldsworth gallery in London is "Confection," the second show of works DiMattio made entirely in her new studio. The show expands upon the 34-year-old's first sculpture-only show at Salon 94 in New York earlier this year through its presentation of whimsical and playful, yet hauntingly dark sculptures and paintings. One ceramic sculpture appears like a vibrant and elaborate cake with jarring juxtapositions of rough, guttural forms acting as icing.
Similarly, Bloemenhouder II plays on the Dutch translation ("flower holder") by directly referencing the forms of vases and their histories, while simultaneously carrying miniature porcelain flowers and steel nails on its exterior surface.
"I look at so many different histories but was really inspired by the absurdity of Dutch tulip holders," DiMattio says. "The pieces called Bloemenhouder normally have a double meaning, in that they can hold flowers and are inspired by vase shapes, but the structures also hold hundreds of flowers because of the way they're encrusted."
Her interest in Dutch vases and their transformation reflects the artist's practice as a whole. As a Cooper Union (BFA) and Columbia (MFA) graduate, DiMattio largely deals with the intersection of femininity, craft, and materiality—what can be done to change perceptions of the commonplace? Like Bloemenhouder has a dual meaning, so does "Confection:" a dish made with sweet ingredients, and alternatively, the action of mixing or compounding. Through combining various clays, presenting sculpture in conversation with painting, and compounding materials, DiMattio reimagines the mundane and reconfigures historical movements, ranging from Ming Dynasty ceramic engravings to Rococo floral patterns.
Late last month, we met the artist in New York, not far from the building she lived with her parents (who both immigrated to the U.S. at age six), where she still lives with her husband and soon-to-be-born son.
EMILY MCDERMOTT: In previous interviews, you've talked about the instability expressed in your work. Now, you just built a new home and studio, and you're about to have a baby. Have you seen your life and work become more stable?
FRANCESCA DIMATTIO: My work hasn't become more stable yet. I think adding the upstate thing—having two studios, two houses—has actually kind of thrown up our routine a bit. But once our neuro pathways adjust to this new rhythm, I think we'll find a new sense of stability. Upstate is wonderful and I love the ruggedness it's brought to my life—I'm really different up there. I work on the land and grow vegetables; there's a lot of dirt and there's a lot of physical behavior, but there isn't enough range, culturally. I would never be happy up there full-time.
MCDERMOTT: You were born and raised in New York. What keeps you here?
DIMATTIO: I grew up in Chelsea and I never really left; I live on the fourth floor and grew up in the basement [of the same building]. The range that you see everyday in terms of cleanliness and filth, high and low and cultures—I couldn't imagine living anywhere else. Even London was too clean. I love taking the subway to go to the studio and seeing a huge mix. You look up and the ceiling is falling down with layers of dirt. There are parts that almost take the filth to a sculptural place. I'm really uncomfortable in places that don't have [the range]. From growing up here, I get really uneasy when it's not there.
MCDERMOTT: Were your parents artistic?
DIMATTIO: They were. If they had parents that made them think it was possible—even if they didn't know how—they definitely would have been artists. My mom made ceramics her entire life. She worked in this building you could see from the West Side Highway that looked like a castle. At Cooper Union, she took classes. She always made stuff on the side even though she had a job and raised a family. My dad wrote poetry and took painting classes and was always really creative too.
I spent a lot of time alone. I always wanted to be an artist, I just didn't know that you could be, or how you could be. I went to an art high school but they never even took me to a gallery.
MCDERMOTT: There are also nails on the back of one sculpture.
DIMATTIO: That one has hundreds of tiny porcelain flowers on one side, and protrusions of cannibalized remnants—all the stuff that falls on the floor—and steel nails on the other. The pairing makes you change your feelings about flowers—the scale, the quantity feels like its going to fall on you, the stance of the form is kind of warrior- or soldier-like, definitely masculine. It's this feminine surface on one side and an aggressive surface on the other.
When you spend time with the sculpture, you end up seeing the formal relationship and connection between the seemingly opposite flowers and nails. Both have this untouchable porcupine surface. What seems so different becomes its own new material, and that's the motivation. When everyone's like, "Oh, you found them and stuck them together," I correct them because materially, it's important that they go through something together. When they go in the kiln, a very delicate floral pattern and some rough pinch pot will slump together and there's a settling. It's not about collage; it's more about something being grafted, like when you graft two apples and make a new species. I'm more interested in making a new whole out of conflicting parts.
MCDERMOTT: Do you typically make paintings before the sculptures? Is there any rhyme or reason to the order in which things happen?
DIMATTIO: While initially the sculptures were coming out of the paintings, now I can see the effects of working sculpturally on the paintings. Initially it was definitely paintings first and then sculpture, but the last show, in the spring, I wanted to show the sculptures on their own. They don't have to be in relation to painting. Scale is also really important because I want you to meet them sculpturally and materially first, and have the associations with ceramic be secondary. When they're small and there's a pedestal, they fall into that language no matter what.
MCDERMOTT: Going to your process, do you paint with underglaze for the details?
DIMATTIO: Yeah, I use a lot of underglaze just as they would in the Ming Dynasty. A lot of the processes are exactly as they would've been done—and a lot of them are totally wrong. Like in the paintings, there has to be moments that are completely right to be able to feel how wrong it is when the space gets flattened or the space collapses. It's the same with the technique in the sculptures: for some to feel really wrong, you have to have parts be really right.
