Just Looking : Richard Deacon

Galerie Thomas Schulte presents Just Looking, a solo exhibition of works by Richard Deacon, including new prints and large-format ceramic sculptures exhibited for the first time. With a keen interest in the characteristics of his materials, Deacon extends their formal and experiential possibilities through the systematic approach and ever-evolving methods of construction that have come to define his decades-spanning practice. The diverse series and bodies of work featured here underscore his production of variations – particularly in ways that broach familiarity, while remaining wholly singular. In glazed ceramic, digital prints on polyester, and lacquered steel, surfaces transform and take on a character of their own: with varying degrees of mattness and sheen, alternatingly smooth and rough, open and closed, seemingly flat and decidedly voluminous.

I Know What You Are Thinking (2023-24) is a series ofceramic sculptures in irregular shapes that lie low to the ground like scattered puzzle pieces. Layers of different colored glazes result in candy-coated pastels and jewel tones, in surfaces that reveal light cracks, speckles, or hatched impressions. Jagged, angular geometries or fluid, organic dips and curves at turns bring to mind splatters of liquid, fleshy matter, or a torn-out fragment of a larger surface. What unites them is their relative size, horizontal orientation, and surfaces that gently swell. Their rounded bottom sides set them on rocky ground, the gap where they partially lift away from the floor activating the relationship between surfaces and becoming part of the space of the work. Oddly flat and apparently mobile, it is as though two-dimensional shapes are inflating themselves into three-dimensional space.

Glazed ceramics have played a prominent role in Deacon's practice for more than two decades. The unpredictability of the firing process is a point of fascination for him – especially in terms of color, as an integral part of the material surface – and reflects a correspondence between the purposeful and the incidental that unfolds in his work more broadly. In more recent bodies of work, the lightly curved surfaces of ceramic sculptures that might otherwise appear flat have lent a particular anthropomorphic quality, almost as though they are bodies that breathe.

While the horizontal ceramic sculptures appear to teeter on unsure footing, the works titled Do You Agree stand up, planted flatly and firmly. Here, Deacon takes a similar approach to his material, which again billows outward on two sides – but to different effect. The orientation is changed to one of assertion, with the taller of the two, Do You Agree #2 (2025), coming to resemble an over-large torso. Its posture seems to shift with the perspective and reflections of light hitting its dark, rippling surface. While Do You Agree #1 (2025), on the other hand, is a rounded, elongated form coated in creamy yellow. What may initially appear more pared down bears a cratered surface and not-quite-symmetrical shape on closer inspection. In both, the change of orientation has a similar effect of reversal on the relationship between volumetric form and flat plane. Abstract yet seemingly straight forward in their contours, the works confront us with a firm stance in one moment and slip past our grasp in the next.

A nebulous lack of resolution characterizes a group of prints on sublimated polyester, each titled Desert (2026) and composited from four parts. The prints are enlargements of drawings Deacon originally produced on his phone – a practice he has taken up with regularity over the last few years, expanding the surface and material potential of his drawings, which have formed an integral part of his work since the early stages of his career. The layering and intersection of translucent digital strokes on a screen simulates texture and depth where there otherwise is none. Here, the drawings undergo a transfer from the sleek digital surface to the tactility of the textile, which possesses a texture and sheen of its own. Like traces in dust, the ghostly images carry a physical presence, while retaining an immaterial essence. Hazy white structures formed of interwoven or spiralling lines give the impression of extreme weather conditions, like a whirlwind, or gently wavering reflections on rippling water. Desert #4 may even suggest a highly zoomed-in depiction of a surface structure: its hatched lines or interwoven threads and the negative spaces that they open up.

An interplay of open and closed forms structures the surface in a series of lacquered steel sculptures (2017 - 2018) also featured here. Composed of visible seams, the lines and angles of varied polygons connect, overlap and intersect in intricate arrangements. They are relatively flat, almost line drawings in space, and yet, the free-standing, pedestal-based works pronounce their sculptural nature. Recesses from material folds and layers generate shadows, as paint and lacquer heighten points of connection and add another quality to light reflections. Through metallic hues like copper and silver, their material presence is further enhanced. Each sculpture consists of three overlaid shapes further subdivided into smaller ones within their frames, at times making it difficult to discern one shape or layer from another. The works are each titled after three consecutive letters of the alphabet – individual shapes as the building blocks of a language, collapsed on top of one another in an illegible tangle.

Deacon’s distinctive visual language is full of such expansions and contractions. Even when connections between autonomous forms are not immediately recognizable, there is a sense that ever-new structures, relationships and associated meanings could unfold among them. As the works spread through and interact with the various spaces of the gallery, tucked into its inner rooms or on street-facing display, their shifting demeanors and multifaceted impressions beckon more than a passing glance. Who it is that is just looking here may depend on the context, but it’s a question that remains to be asked. 

Text by Julianne Cordray