IRIS NESHER

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE - Ateliers Courbet is pleased to announce the first solo exhibition of Israeli artist-ceramicist Iris Nesher in the United States, on view at Ateliers Courbet’s Chelsea gallery from March 10–May 1, 2026. The exhibition will unveil a new body of ceramic work resulting from a creative and curatorial dialogue between the artist, guest curator Daniella Ohad, and the team at Ateliers Courbet. Created over two years in her Tel Aviv studio, the new series reflects Nesher’s progression into functional sculpture and design, bridging her sculptural practice with her ongoing exploration of porcelain’s material properties and expressive possibilities. The exhibition will include an installation of vessels, plates and centerpiece bowls alongside a new sculptural lamp integrating light and porcelain.

Born in Milan in 1966 and based in Tel Aviv, Nesher brings a multidisciplinary perspective to her ceramic practice, informed by a longstanding engagement with photography and earlier sculpture work. For over twenty years, she was widely recognized and exhibited for her fine-art photography, developing a visual language defined by thoughtful restraint and tonal subtlety — qualities that continue to infuse her work across media. Her transition to ceramics emerged unexpectedly through a photographic project involving expressive tableware, an encounter that prompted a fundamental shift from capturing and interpreting a subject or an emotion to molding and translating the emotion through the still-life composition itself.

Drawing on her background in sculpture, Nesher began experimenting with various clays before discovering Limoges porcelain, a material with a distinguished history. First excavated in the French town of Limoges during the 18th-century golden age of European porcelain, this malleable clay has long been prized for its whiteness, purity, and strength. For Nesher, it provides an ideal medium for achieving both plasticity and delicacy, enabling the creation of her signature forms. Each piece is hand-shaped and unique, bearing subtle marks of touch and process while maintaining formal clarity.

Fragility and impermanence stand at the core of Nesher’s work. Through cracks, cuts, and fragmented elements, her pieces embody a broken continuity — gestures toward fragmented memory and the quiet tensions of personal experience rendered in luminous white porcelain. She embraces the material’s inherent vulnerability, allowing surface cracking, fragmentation, and structural tension to become integral to each work’s character. In select pieces, elements are bound together with thread, emphasizing the delicate threshold between strength and fragility.