Bari Ziperstein: The Right Pair
Charles Moffett is pleased to present The Right Pair, an intimately-scaled exhibition of new sculptures by the Los Angeles-based artist Bari Ziperstein. Occupying the front spaces of the gallery, the show marks the first time the artist has exhibited variable editions. Working in ceramics over the past 20 years, Ziperstein has developed an artistic mastery of the medium. Her rigorous and ambitious approach pushes the perceived limits of scale, form, construction, color and finish to create hand-painted sculptures of tremendous technical and ideological complexity. Materially experimental and conceptual at its core, much of the artist’s practice has engaged ideas of consumerism, propaganda, and the built environment.
Charles Moffett is pleased to present The Right Pair, an intimately-scaled exhibition of new sculptures by the Los Angeles-based artist Bari Ziperstein. Occupying the front spaces of the gallery, the show marks the first time the artist has exhibited variable editions. Working in ceramics over the past 20 years, Ziperstein has developed an artistic mastery of the medium. Her rigorous and ambitious approach pushes the perceived limits of scale, form, construction, color and finish to create hand-painted sculptures of tremendous technical and ideological complexity. Materially experimental and conceptual at its core, much of the artist’s practice has engaged ideas of consumerism, propaganda, and the built environment.
Ziperstein’s new sculptural series of variable editions reflects a fresh creative moment of profound personal introspection and maternal vulnerability. The exhibition comprises 20 ceramic sculptures, formed from casts of the left and right hands of Ziperstein’s 12-year-old son Lawrence, who is a talented young baseball player. In keeping with the artist’s ongoing study and immersion in the visual culture of early- and mid-20th century Europe, each cast hand’s surface is uniquely glazed and carved with a variety of patterned designs inspired by a ladies glove from the pioneering collective the Wiener Werkstätte (Vienna Workshops). Ziperstein selected the decorative pattern in a conceptual nod to the resonances between her son’s prized catcher’s mitt and his skilled hands within and the adornment and care bestowed on the early 20th century fashion. The final sculptures bring the cast left and right hands together in an embrace, supported by an arrangement of wall-mounted, hand-painted ceramic bricks with heart shaped motifs. What began as a playful studio experiment between mother and child evolved into a powerful, sculptural meditation on our relationships to time, memory, masculinity, aging, and parenthood.
As our collective memories and time stamps largely veer toward the ephemerality of the digital realm, the artist’s hand-wrought work elicits the rare satisfaction of tangibility and permanence. For Ziperstein, the creation of this series allowed her to capture a pivotal moment of flux in her son’s life — a time of both urgent yearning for independence and instinctual desire for the consistency and comfort of a parent. The artist completed these works at her studio in downtown Los Angeles, as well as during time spent earlier this year as a Visiting Artist at Anderson Ranch Arts Center in Snowmass, CO, far removed from her son yet still able to hold his hand, frozen in time. This contradictory process of creation mirrors in many ways the artist’s own grappling with the shifts in her relationship with her son and within her relationship to motherhood itself — how can one be near and far in the same moment, and how can one preserve such moments yet still embrace the constancy of change and independence of a growing tween.
Bari Ziperstein (b. 1978, Chicago; works in Los Angeles. MFA CalArts 2004, BFA Ohio University 2000.) works in mixed media sculpture with a primary focus on ceramics. Recent and upcoming solo and two-person exhibition of the artist’s work include presentations at galleries and museums such as Vielmetter, Los Angeles, CA (2027), Nina Johnson Gallery, Miami, FL (2023), Charles Moffett, New York, NY (2023 and 2019), the Wende Museum, Culver City, CA (2022), and Vielmetter, Los Angeles, CA (2022), where the artist is also represented. Select recent group exhibitions include The Vessel Revisited: Fundamental Forms in Contemporary Ceramics at the Torggler Fine Arts Center, Newport News, VA (2025); Traces at the Kimball Art Center, Park City, UT (2025); COLA Individual Master Artist Project Grant Exhibition at the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery, Los Angeles, CA (2024)’ Clay Pop: Part Two and Part One at Deitch Projects, Los Angeles, CA (2023 and 2021); Breaking Ground: Women in California Clay at American Museum of Ceramic Art (AMOCA), Pomona, CA (2022); and Transformations at the Wende Museum, Culver City, CA (2020), among many others. Ziperstein’s work is held in the permanent collections of institutions including the Fondazione Culturale Officine Saffi, Milan, Italy; Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, CA; Museum of Art, Architecture and Design, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA; Los Angeles County Arts Commission, Los Angeles, CA; and University of California, Riverside, CA.
