Jessica Silverman is delighted to announce representation of Rebecca Manson, whose debut solo show with the gallery opens on January 8 and runs through February 28, 2026. The New York-based artist is a virtuoso sculptor who explores nature’s microcosms, magnifying delicate details into large, intensely tactile forms. Her practice reimagines ceramics as visceral fantasies where sight is subverted by touch and form surpasses function.
Manson’s relationship to clay began at age eight when she started taking pottery classes. She has since spent her career leveraging its materiality to examine embodiment, empathy, and the relationship between vitality and decay. Though her sculptures often assume abstract or winged forms, they are rooted in the figure. Her journey from pottery to sculpture has embraced clay furniture, porcelain sunflowers, and animal pelts, all acting as proxies for the human body.
After graduating from Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), Manson received a Windgate-Lamar Fellowship that ultimately led to an outdoor public work in Tribeca Park. A later collaboration with engineers yielded a flexible adhesive that enabled bonded pieces of porcelain to behave like textiles. This innovation opened the door to the signature moth and butterfly wings. Composed of thousands of hand-shaped glazed clay that she calls “smushes,” the works roar with material intelligence. Manson’s work is in conversation with the history of impressionist and post-impressionist painting as well as the witty ceramics of Grayson Perry and Arlene Shechet.
The title of the exhibition, “Time, You Must Be Laughing,” draws from Joni Mitchell’s 1975 song “Sweet Bird” and evokes the dark humor of impermanence. The exhibition features 13 sculptures, made primarily of porcelain, depicting larger-than-life butterfly and moth wings, flowers, and a swing set. Together, these works explore the relationships between bodies and the natural world, and time as a force that reshapes both.
At the center of the exhibition is Nightsnack (2022–2025), an eight-by-eight-foot trompe-l’œil construction made of ceramic and glass. Modeled after Manson’s childhood swing set, its porcelain posts mimic worn lichen-covered wood. An uncannily realistic bag litters a pile of ceramic leaves, while a glass bikini hangs nearby. Both playful and elegiac, the joys of youth and freedom feel tangible but slippery, as if on the brink of expiration.
A four-part winged wall installation titled Exploding Butterfly (2025) elicits another suspended moment. Monumental butterfly wings appear to drift apart, magnifying a miniscule rupture into a visceral drama, where beauty shatters in slow motion. Their gradual fragmentation conjures awe and angst. The work reflects Manson’s interest in the beauty of decay.
Manson’s polychromatic glazes create optically rich ecosystems that simulate iridescence, vibration, and motion. Wall works such as Shelly and Blue Admiral Wing (both 2025) exemplify Manson’s technical precision. Shelly shimmers through high-contrast and complementary color rather than reflective glazes. Meanwhile, intricate veining reminiscent of leaves and gem-like glass inlays in Blue Admiral Wing refer to the species’ camouflage. Enlarged many times over, these details evoke the fragility and resilience of natural life cycles and human experience.
Throughout the exhibition, beginnings and endings coexist. Manson embraces change as a constant, positioning her work as a place where grief lifts and the persistence of nature offers grounded hope. Embodying both strength and vulnerability, Manson’s work insists that transformation—emotional, ecological, and material—is not merely a condition to endure but a site where new meaning forms.
Rebecca Manson (b. 1989, New York, NY) has a BFA in Ceramics from the Rhode Island School of Design. She was the subject of recent solo exhibitions at Arsenal Contemporary, Montreal and Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, TX. She has participated in group exhibitions at Ballroom Marfa, TX; Katonah Museum of Art, NY; and Center for Craft, Asheville, NC, among others. She is the recipient of numerous residencies and awards including The Arctic Circle, Svalbard, Norway; The Oxbow School, Napa, CA; California State University Long Beach, CA; and the Windgate-Lamar Fellowship, Little Rock, AR. Her work is in the public collections of the Bunker Collection, Miami; the Rachofsky Collection, Dallas; and Arsenal Contemporary Art, Montreal. Manson recently participated in “Her Dark Materials,” a group exhibition at Jessica Silverman and in January 2026 will have her first solo with the gallery. Manson lives and works in Brooklyn. She is represented by Josh Lilley, London and Jessica Silverman, San Francisco.