Track 16 is pleased to present Strange World, an exhibition of new work by Debra Broz, opening August 24th in the gallery’s first floor space in the Bendix Building at 1206 Maple Ave in Los Angeles. In sculptures and drawings focused on animal forms, Broz reconstructs cultural kitsch to create new narratives that welcome the subversive and absurd. Strange World centers on three new maximalist sculptures created with hundreds of pieces of ceramic figurines collected over the past decade. These works are visually overwhelming and darkly optimistic, synthesizing the confusion of limitless information with moments of clarity, humor, and beauty. In the largest work, The Weight of the World, parts of ceramic animal figurines produced by numerous makers over decades are chaotically yet thoughtfully organized into an ellipsoid form resting atop the back of a turtle expressing the artist’s inclination that everything exists—in some way—forever.
Alongside these larger works, Broz has created a new series of her altered figurines and a series of drawings on mismatched thrifted plates called Night Creatures. Broz started making the drawings early in 2024 as an exercise in spontaneity, to create a mental separation from her perfectionist restoration technique. She made them with oven-bake porcelain craft paints like the ones popularized by women who were “china painting” hobbyists after their forcible return to domestic spaces in the post-World War II era. Like women before her, she finds a type of freedom in the confines of the plate.
In Strange World, Broz relies on the constant tension between the aesthetics of excess and the satisfaction of the simple gesture. Using humor, form, and subversion, Broz plants ideas about power hierarchies, sustainability, the crafting of origin stories, internet and meme culture, and the significance of craft, hobby, and decoration.
