Project Room | Julia Haft-Candell: Hold

Julia Haft-Candell: Hold is Haft-Candell’s first exhibition with Rebecca Camacho Presents. Haft-Candell works across media, but her practice is rooted in clay-based sculpture. She incorporates multi-layered glazes often with bronze and gold flourishes into sculptural objects whose forms are derived from the artist’s visual lexicon, comprising specific symbols and motifs such as combs, hands, chains, and infinity loops. These symbols and forms were created from a space of discontent with norms and standards, sparking expansion and learning by making and doing. Inquiry guides Haft-Candell’s process, and she continually experiments with new methods, forms, and materials. Guided by an evolving personal philosophy she calls “The Infinite,” Haft-Candell’s works and the pedagogy informing her methods as an educator are rooted in the ideals that constitute this ever-evolving fictional world. 

Sculptures that hold, contain, and behold underpin Haft-Candell’s newest body of work on view at Rebecca Camacho Presents. Employing sgraffito, a technique of carving into clay before firing, allows Haft-Candell to achieve a particular variation in textures and colors in the surfaces of her work. This technique is evident in Light Holder with Mood Chart (2024), a sculpture of a hand extended backwards that doubles as a lamp adorned with chains of loops that splay across its surface. Hand Holder with Legs (2024) also dabbles in duality – it is both sculpture and stool – an object to be seen, experienced, and used. Legsconce with Drops (2024) is a sculpture masquerading as an illuminated wall sconce, captured in a state of genesis, of becoming, as legs extend outward from the clay body holding them. 

The opening reception on 9 January 2025 begins at 6pm with a dialogue between Claire Oswalt and Julia Haft-Candell about the intersections between their practices and processes and centering the works on view in their respective exhibitions.