Schroeder Romero & Shredder is pleased to announce our new exhibition, which also marks the inaugural exhibition in our new space. On view in the Schroeder Romero gallery is Brice Brown: Queening, and in the Shredder gallery is Sèvres and Savage.

Blurring the line where fine art, design and the decorative arts collide, Brown’s work explores the transformative nature of the fetishized object - sexual or otherwise - and its relation to gay identity and the instability of memory and narrative located in historical objects. At the same time, he uses these fetishized objects to question notions of luxury and class. These new works, which include sterling silver furniture, c-prints, harlequin puppets, antique textiles, large-scale sculpture and found objects cast in precious metals, often incorporate appropriated antiques, re-imagining the decorative art object as readymade. Objects, both antique and quotidian, are stripped of their original intent and brought together in new contexts - and often recast in materials such as bronze or sterling silver - to form new narratives. In many of his pieces Brown incorporates an abstracted pattern of beard hair, subverting a fetish prominent in gay Bear culture into a decorative element, highlighting how the fetish itself can actually be denuded of its mystical power and transformed into something safe.

Sèvres and Savage draws on and expands Brown’s exploration of transformation through the fetishization of material and how it relates to identity and class. On view are examples of 19th century Sèvres (French) porcelain alongside photographs of Versailles by Naomi Savage (American, 1927-2005). Since its founding in 1756, the Sèvres factory has consistently produced innovative porcelain objects, frequently employing some of the most important artists of the day - from August Rodin to Louise Bourgeois - to design forms, decorations, and figure groupings. The rage for porcelain in the early 18th century turned common clay into a commodity as precious as gold, and ownership of these objects could elevate one’s social status, bringing them closer, but not too close, to royalty. Indeed, a few of the objects in Sèvres and Savage were actually owned by the French royals, including a pair of presentation vases from the collection of Louis XVIII. Everyday forms, such as baskets and creamers, were transformed into sculpture, their daily functions supplanted by their extraordinary cost, and their preciousness. Similarly, the black and white images of statues dotting the gardens of Versailles by Naomi Savage - whose experimental nature, perhaps owed to her learning photography from her uncle Man Ray, at times led her to print images onto porcelain plaques - are direct allusions to the mystique of the royal class.