Artist: Sally Silberberg

Berry Campbell presents a focused exhibition of works by Sally Silberberg, highlighting porcelain sculptures from the 1980s.

At mid-career, Silberberg stepped away from creating functional ceramics to instead develop a radical new sculptural language. Working in porcelain, she abandoned the potter’s wheel in favor of building, cutting, and reassembling solid forms, pushing the material to its structural and perceptual limits. These sculptures emerged from an intensely exploratory period for the artist, during which she refined this process, grounded in equal parts control and risk. While firmly rooted in ceramic tradition, these works also engage with broader currents in postwar and 1980s art. Works from this series are in the collections of the Brooklyn Museum and the Smithsonian, although this body of work has largely remained unseen since they were first made. Silberberg’s porcelain sculptures constitute a distinct and powerful body of work that marks a pivotal moment of evolution in her practice and material exploration.