Ayla Tavares and Beatrice Modisett tackle time divergently.  

Modisett’s recent work on display mines campfires to take form. Salvaged from the dead fires of camping excursions outside the city, these remnants yield sooty, painting-like works, the compositions framed by blackened, bunched-up sticks of wood. Within, wonderfully crude charcoal marks on pigment-covered paper surfaces render abstract forms. Modisett carefully collects debris from each trip to incorporate into her compositions. There’s a simultaneous evocation of the protective fire and the dead, cool air that later surrounds the black remains in the morning light the day after a blaze fulfilled its task. Here, time is quick; after the fire is set, it is gone.

By contrast, Tavares conjures slower intervals. These ceramic sculptures have rough, sandy surfaces with graphite drawings in small vignettes atop them, evoking wavy, patterned hieroglyphics on the artist’s terms. While her pieces have taken various sizes, the work in her Materia materia series is smaller, each about the width of an open palm, and appears unearthed from a fictional yet deeply human civilization from centuries ago. But looking closely, these objects are remarkably contemporary through their topological manipulations into exquisite forms. There are many rich shapes waving out of the wall, and each relief offers distinct pleasures. The select drawings on the sculptures continue the undulating cosmology of form, pulling the viewer into these brief and mysterious moments.

Stories told around campfires have been preserved for thousands of years, indicating their generative possibilities to foster permanence, while, despite our best efforts, ceramics will inevitably break, even over the course of hundreds of years or instantly by a clumsy hand. Each work explores labor-intensive processes with the artist’s hand, further elevating its personal nature as a mediation of the world. Fire hardens shape in Tavares’s sculptures, while flames destroyed material for Modisett to salvage. Although this seems opposed, there is a compulsion to erect something new and to build from ruin, both of which converge on the goal of preservation.

There is thus a generosity in showing Modisett and Tavares together as they both remind us of how materials can be used so differently to solidify personal narratives and experiences, even as they do not guarantee their persistence. Approaching things with divergent methods doesn’t mean pursuing different results, but you can relish in these artists’ material juxtapositions. The flaky, ashen surfaces of Modisett’s compositions are antithetical to the rough, plum black solidity of Tavares’s reliefs; however, matter still comes together to offer a range of possibilities for the ever-present probing of time and feelings.

– Bryan Martin

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ABOUT THE ARTIST

Ayla Tavares (b. 1990, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) lives and works in Madrid, Spain. She holds a Master’s degree in Visual Arts from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), with a specialization in ceramic production and archaeology. 

Solo exhibitions include Earendel at Lamb Gallery (2024, London), Coisas que se movem lentas at Athena Gallery (2024, Rio de Janeiro), Ustão at the Eva Klabin House Museum (2023, Rio de Janeiro), Alfarería del agua at the Collegium Museum (2022, Arévalo), and Sonantes at Centro Cultural Light (2019, Rio de Janeiro). She has also presented the duo exhibition Anthologies of a Receptacle with artist Celeida Tostes at Hatch Gallery (2025, Paris). Group exhibitions include the Jingdezhen International Ceramic Art Biennale (2023, Jingdezhen), and presentations at institutions such as Instituto Inclusartiz (2025, Rio de Janeiro), Galerist (2025, Istanbul), Casa de la Moneda (2024, Segovia), Centro Cultural dos Correios (2024, Rio de Janeiro), Centro Municipal de Artes Hélio Oiticica (2019, Rio de Janeiro), and Paço Imperial (2019, Rio de Janeiro).

In 2026, she will participate in Several Eternities in a Day, curated by Pablo José Ramírez at the Hammer Museum (Los Angeles, USA), as well as a group exhibition curated by Aldones Nino at the Brazilian Pavilion of the Gwangju Biennale (Gwangju, South Korea).


Beatrice Modisett (b. Washington, DC) lives and works in Ridgewood, Queens and is hand-building her version of utopia with her partner the percussionist Ellery Trafford on their piece of land in Upstate NY. While populating the property with wildflowers, conifer trees and semi-permanent eco-friendly shelters, they also operate a residency and welcome artists, writers, musicians and composers to the property annually.

Her work has been exhibited in group and solo exhibitions at the Queens Museum (Queens, NY), Maier Museum of Art (Lynchburg, VA), Analog Diary (Beacon, NY), Assembly Room (New York, NY), HallSpace (Boston, MA) and others. She has participated in residencies around the world including Wave Hill Winter Workspace (Bronx, NY), SIM (Reykjavík, Iceland) and Palazzo Monti (Brescia, Italy). She was named by Artsy’s Alina Cohen as one of “11 Emerging Artists Redefining Abstract Painting”. Modisett earned a BFA in Painting from Montserrat College of Art and an MFA in Painting and Printmaking from Virginia Commonwealth University.

Modisett was awarded a Visual Artist grant by Cafe Royal Cultural Foundation in 2019, and is the recipient of several fellowships, including Wave Hill Winter Workspace Fellowship (2020) and partial fellowships at The Hambidge Center, Rabun Gap, GA (2010) and Vermont Studio Center, Johnson, VT (2009); and has been awarded residencies at Palazzo Monti, Brescia, IT (2019) and Samband Íslenskra Myndlistarmanna, Reyjkavík, IS (2018).