Allan Stone Projects is pleased to present Dennis Clive: Ceramic Transport on view from January 10 – February 16, 2019. Ranging in sensibility from the playful to the apocalyptic, Clive utilizes his mastery of clay to both satirize and celebrate symbols of American transport in ten elaborate sculptures from the Allan Stone Collection.

Inspired by a dream, Clive began experimenting with clay while taking an elective arts course in college. He began creating highly-detailed facsimiles of trucks, planes and automobiles. The clay’s physicality is apparent in these works, whose surfaces fold and undulate like skin over their mechanical framework. Clive has anthropomorphized wheels, bumpers, headlights and tailpipes in a manner both suggestive and humorous.

Marvels at a distance, the true extent of Clive’s abilities lie in the close-up view, when the scrutiny paid to details like undercarriages, windshield reflections, license plates, and hand painted logos and decals, are most apparent. Yet the convincing realism of detail

does not overshadow the inherent fragility of the clay, nor Clive’s ambitious use of it. With a style that pays homage to Robert Arneson and California Funk Art, Clive has carved his own niche. His sculptures echo the childhood of the American baby-boomers, who grew up with build-it-yourself models, the fading memories of WWII, and the emergence of claymation.

Dennis Clive was born in Niagara Falls, New York in 1950. He studied at the State University of New York at Brockport where he received his BS in 1972 and later at the University of Cincinnati, College of Design, Art and Architecture where he received his MFA in 1975. Clive first exhibited at Allan Stone Gallery in 1976, where he has been the subject of six solo shows and numerous group exhibitions. His work has been featured at the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, the Detroit Institute of Art, the Berkeley Art Center, the Contemporary Arts Center of Cincinnati and Rochester’s Memorial Art Gallery. Clive’s work has been profiled in Artnews and The New Yorker. He was the subject of a New York Times interview in 2002. The artist lives and works north of the San Francisco Bay, in Sebastapol, California.