Sperone Westwater is pleased to present Peter Schlesinger: new sculptures and photographic memories, the gallery’s first exhibition of new ceramic sculptures, vessels and vintage photographs by Peter Schlesinger.

Schlesinger’s ceramic works include figurative sculptures that evoke mythology and fables in forms such as octopi and trees, as well as vessels that reference ancient forms and enigmatic biomorphic shapes with inventive glazes and textures. The exhibition will feature new glazed stoneware made with the artist’s own glazes and fired in his own kiln.

The presentation will also include a selection of Schlesinger’s photographs of old friends and his travels through Europe and America, dating between 1968 and 1989. Schlesinger’s photographic journey began in 1966, when as an 18-year-old student, he met David Hockney who became his partner for several years. During this time and in the early years of his relationship with his life partner, photographer Eric Boman, Schlesinger met and photographed some of the great personalities of the day, including Hockney, Cecil Beaton, Tina Chow, Paloma Picasso and Andy Warhol. Schlesinger captured larger-than-life figures with intimacy and immediacy, their humanity frozen in time with the click of his shutter.

Peter Schlesinger (b. 1948, Los Angeles) lives and works between Bellport, NY and New York City. After studying painting at the University of California, Los Angeles, he went on to London’s Slade School of Art in the late 1960s and early 1970s and began making sculpture in New York in the mid-1980s. Schlesinger’s work has been exhibited at Gallery Met, New York, NY; Flag Art Foundation, New York; the Parrish Art Museum, Water Mill, NY; David Lewis Gallery, New York; Paula Cooper Gallery, New York; MoMA PS1, New York; The Clocktower, New York; Tate Liverpool, UK; and the Hayward Gallery, London. His work is in collections including the Arts Council Collection, London; the Farnsworth Museum, Rockland, ME; Manchester Art Gallery, UK; the Parrish Art Museum; and the UBS Art Collection, New York.