Fueled by themes of intimacy, gender, and sexuality, Jake Ziemann's sculptures balance bodily shapes with everyday objects and industrial support. He imbues his sculptures with empathy through material dualities and formal gestures, blending notions of stability with vulnerability, the found with the handmade, and the abstract with the figurative.

 

The painterly ceramic forms in Ziemann’s sculptures drip, slump, fold, and lean as they physically interact with their components—the connections between these two elements allude to a sense of longing for permanence and structure. Using materials that are suggestive of the artist’s studio, and correlated with construction, Ziemann's work is formally rooted in the process of building, reflective of 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.