Reception: Friday, September 12th, 6:00–8:00 p.m.
Alison Bradley Projects is pleased to announce Form of Content, a three-person exhibition featuring paintings by Tadaaki Kuwayama alongside ceramic works by Yuji Ueda, and Anna Gleeson. Together, the works explore how form, structure, and material embody meaning—whether through the rigor of Minimalist abstraction, the elemental force of clay, or the immediacy of touch.
A pioneering figure in Minimalism, Tadaaki Kuwayama (b. 1932, Nagoya, Japan; d. 2023, New York) moved to New York in 1958 and developed a practice that sought to strip painting of subjectivity, gesture, and illusion. His aluminum and canvas panels, articulated by precise divisions and fields of pure color, exemplify an uncompromising pursuit of clarity. Over six decades, Kuwayama’s insistence on objectivity expanded the possibilities of abstraction and secured his place as one of the movement’s most exacting voices.
Yuji Ueda (b. 1975, Shigaraki, Japan), working in the historic pottery region of Shigaraki, approaches clay as a force of nature. His vessels often bulge, rupture, or collapse in the kiln, embodying the tension between control and accident. Ueda’s work pushes the traditions of Japanese ceramics to the edge of destruction, producing objects that feel at once geological and alive. Where Kuwayama enacts absolute discipline, Ueda embraces volatility and uncommon material pairings — yet both reach toward a purity of form that transcends narrative and symbolism.
The intuitive, hand-formed ceramics of Anna Gleeson (b. 1978, Newcastle, Australia) extend the conversation into a more intimate register, balancing Kuwayama’s stringency and Ueda’s raw intensity with immediacy and tactility. Her vessels resonate their haptic qualities: surfaces made of the exploration of terrain and contrapuntal glazing.
Form of Content underscores the continued resonance of Minimalism’s radical propositions while opening space for materiality, imperfection, and intuition. Kuwayama’s disciplined monochromes, Ueda’s volatile earthworks, and Gleeson’s intuitive vessels reveal a shared pursuit: to uncover meaning not beyond the work, but within the very forms themselves.
