FERRARA SHOWMAN GALLERY is excited to announce the third exhibition in its seasonal, online exclusive series. Photo Ceramica Mortis marks the first gallery solo exhibition of Philadelphia-based photographer and ceramicist Peter Olson. The exhibition features new and recent works by the artist since his first appearance in the premonitory group exhibition "Art In Doom" which opened one week before the pandemic shutdown. The gallery’s 2025 Spring edition of "Online Exclusive" will be on view from 1 April through 30 June and select works will be available for in-person viewing at the gallery throughout this time. 

Olson says of this survey of recent work . . . 

Fusing these two disciplines of wheel-thrown ceramic craft and digital photography has allowed for an expansion of my professional work as a mature artist beyond a single medium. All ceramics are hand-thrown by hand, glazed, adorned, and fired in my Pennsylvania studio. These vessels can hold no air to breath, no place to safely store any imaginative space. The pieces are empty from the inside out. This period marks a preoccupation with death and destruction. The primary imagery is made up of ancient medical illustrations and photographs of medieval religious art, skulls from the catacombs, and monuments to death in its myriad causes.

PETER OLSON has, for the last twelve years, harmonized photography and ceramics, two mediums that have forced their way into fine art. As bands of imagery spin around the thrown and assembled ceramic garnitures, there is a feeling that time is passing, history is revealing itself, a story is being told. There is mystery as the story itself is unclear. Olson is a trained professional photographer but when making art moonlights as a street photographer, informed by daily life and by cultural and religious objects. He is the field’s most inventive and inspired master of fired decals (a 17th century innovation) infusing them with the passion for his subjects and magical, kinetic banding.

As a professional photographer, Peter Olson has traveled the world many times over. From corporate culture to religious iconography, he finds meaning in the repetition of human expression. His recent ceramic sculptures draw upon his deep experience with the camera, to reimagine captured imagery in a cylindrical form.

The images encasing each ceramic piece are left by ink from photographic prints that when fired, burn away leaving a permanent and detailed image from the iron oxide in the ink.
Color tone is determined by time and temperature .These expertly collaged individual pieces give way to a fixed visual narrative, a kaleidoscope of imagery than spans centuries and continents. When joined this way, each motif contributes to a network of increasing complexity.

Accordingly, every image was captured by Olson himself, and each compilation is a testament to his eye, his interests, his documenting of his time on earth. His formal visual arts training in photography lends a refreshing take on what can be a traditional craft medium. The dimensions of individual pieces fall within a spectrum that changes with each series. Yet all are unique and do not adhere firmly to any framework but the artist’s own. Their vessel form serves more as an art historical reference to the ancient Greeks, than it does a utilitarian purpose. Many contain visual surprises; a hidden leaf placed just so, a strange and nuanced combination of characters —more than enough to satisfy a curious eye.

The self-contained vessels result from meditations on visual experiences. These are cylindrical worlds where street photography coexists with images of classical sculpture in a celebration of the human form and our shared continuous history. Riddle-like in their delicate placement, each piece mimics the precarious layers of its two-dimensional content. The effect of images wrapping around each piece seamlessly calls upon the photographer’s eye, as if their surface were the result of light reflecting images from a surrounding view. These forms are reflections of the world through the eyes of a seasoned photographer; and having been realized in three dimensions, they now take on a life of their own.