Until October 25, 2025, Matthew Marks Gallery in New York presents Ken Price: Primal, Physical, Sensual at 523 West 24th Street, showcasing twenty-nine sculptures and drawings from the artist’s estate, many exhibited for the first time. Spanning Ken Price’s five-decade career, the exhibition highlights his innovative ceramic cups from the 1960s, often featuring snails or frogs, and later biomorphic sculptures inspired by nature, including Hawaiian volcanoes and Taos, New Mexico’s desert landscapes. The title reflects Price’s description of his cups as “primal, physical, and sensual,” embodying fundamental human experiences. His work merges natural forms with everyday objects and the human body, creating sculptures and drawings that, as critic Roberta Smith noted, “seduce and enlighten.” Price (1935–2012), born in Los Angeles, had his first solo show at Ferus Gallery in 1960. His work has been featured at major institutions, including LACMA, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Drawing Center.
Ken Price: Primal, Physical, Sensual / Matthew Marks Gallery, New York. September 4, 2025.
Press text (excerpt):
Matthew Marks is pleased to announce Ken Price: Primal, Physical, Sensual, the next exhibition in his gallery at 523 West 24th Street. Spanning the artist’s entire career, the exhibition includes twenty-nine sculptures and drawings from the artist’s estate, many of which are exhibited here for the first time.
Early in his career, Price made a series of innovative ceramic cups, often adorned with snails or frogs, or emerging from rock-like bases. The title of the exhibition is taken from a statement Price made about this work that speaks to the most fundamental aspects of his influential, five-decade-long career: “I just like the cup. I think it’s a real kind of primal idiom. When you use a cup, it’s right in your hand, and you actually put it to your mouth and drink warm liquid from it. That is very primal, physical, and sensual, and is representative of sensual life.”
Price found a powerful source of inspiration in nature, from the erupting volcanoes seen in his frequent travels to Hawaii, to the spectacular desert landscapes of his home in Taos, New Mexico. Beginning with the cups in the 1960s, then the specimen rocks of the 1980s, and finally the later, biomorphic sculptures for which he is best known, the exhibition highlights how Price synthesized these forms together with everyday objects and the human body. The sculptures and drawings on view, “seduce and enlighten,” as the critic Roberta Smith has written of his work.
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