Soft Cube Form

Label

I think the sense of Japanese restraint and Western minimalism combine, in these pieces, the forms and ideas I studied more than 40 years ago [in Japan]. -- Malcolm Wright

Imagining the two Malcolm Wright ceramic sculptures as architecture or mountains allows us to get a sense of the awe possible from close engagement. For Soft Cube Form, Wright uses geometry in a manner that suggests human intervention, while Mountain with White boasts undulating organic forms more common to nature. In using smaller forms to suggest larger worlds, the artist demonstrates his familiarity with Japanese art and cultural practices such as Zen gardens that evoke a river, a sea, or the universe. In that country, Wright studied traditional ceramics as well as spiritual and philosophical teachings about the relationship between Zen and art practices.

From the 2025 exhibition Always Already: Abstraction in the United States, curated by John Stomberg, Virginia Rice Kelsey 1961 Director; Jami Powell, Associate Director of Curatorial Affairs and Curator of Indigenous Art; and Amelia Kahl, Barbara C. and Harvey P. Hood 1918 Senior Curator of Academic Programing

Exhibition History

Always Already: Abstraction in the United States, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, April 26,2025.

Provenance

The artist, Shelburne, Vermont; given to the present collection, 2020.

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