Fueled by themes of intimacy, gender, and sexuality, Jake Ziemann’s sculptures balance bodily shapes with everyday objects and industrial support. Through material dualities and formal gestures, his work blends notions of stability and vulnerability, the found and the handmade, and the abstract and the figurative.

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The painterly ceramic forms in Ziemann’s sculptures drip, slump, fold, and lean as they physically interact with their components, the connections between which allude to a longing for permanence and structure. Using materials suggestive of the artist’s studio and construction, the work is rooted in the process of building, reflecting the labor involved in developing relationships with friends, lovers, and the world around him. Projecting a sense of prideful awkwardness, his sculptures act as both static, fetishized objects and stand-ins for emotive bodies, exuding individual or collective presences.