Kim Slate’s ceramic sculptures masterfully blur the line between endearing and unsettling, creating a distinctive visual language that captivates and unnerves in equal measure. Her hand-built creatures exhibit a paradoxical charm — their wide, glassy eyes and exaggerated features suggest animated cheerfulness, while subtle imperfections in their forms introduce an air of quiet peculiarity. This delicate balance between the familiar and the strange speaks to the artist’s ability to imbue static objects with a sense of lurking personality, as if each piece might blink or shift position when no one is looking.
The artist’s background in illustration manifests in her sculptural approach, where graphic sensibilities meet tactile ceramic surfaces. Slate employs traditional techniques with contemporary flair, building forms that appear simultaneously sturdy and fragile. Her glazing choices — often soft pastels or muted tones — enhance the works’ ambiguous character, allowing light to play across surfaces in ways that change their demeanor throughout the day. The sculptures’ postures and proportions walk a fine line between comforting and disquieting, their physicality evoking both childhood nostalgia and more complex adult emotions.
What makes Slate’s practice particularly compelling is its psychological depth. Rather than creating purely decorative objects, she crafts three-dimensional characters that seem to possess inner lives and unspoken narratives. This quality transforms her exhibitions into immersive environments where viewers become participants in an unscripted drama. The works resist easy categorization, their emotional resonance shifting with each viewer’s perspective and personal history. In an art world often divided between overtly cute and deliberately grotesque, Slate’s ceramics occupy a sophisticated middle ground where beauty and unease coexist in perfect, precarious harmony.
More info: Website, Instagram.
in Bahia. 