Roger Herman: California Poppies

California Poppies, the first solo show of Roger Herman’s work at the Los Angeles space of Carpenters Workshop, features a range of new and older works by Herman, offering an in-depth look at this legendary LA-based artist’s career. Herman’s work has always moved between different disciplines, merging painting, design and sculpture in different ways. He was one of the first artists to incorporate ceramics into his practice in the late 1990s, long before it became the popular medium it is today, using the medium as a new way to express his ideas, continuing his expressionist and colourful style onto large pots, plates or vessels.

Ceramics are found throughout the exhibition, on walls, on low benches, plinths or tables. He approaches making the pots as he does his canvases, a quick, instinctual process. He builds up the clay to create irregular shapes and surfaces that might retain handprints or indentations. He often punctures a hole in the side of the larger pots– a functional tool that helps him move them around to paint or bring them to the kiln for firing. The pots are often painted on the inside as well as outside surfaces, and seen next to the paintings, they appear like microcosms of the larger landscape paintings behind them.

Herman has been an important influence on generations of LA-based artists – whether as his student or through studio visits or exhibitions. His spontaneous style that leads to colourful, textural canvases and surfaces of mountains, flowers or landscapes, are never mundane or simplified, but layered, experimental and full of rhythm – exuding an embrace of life, and also of death. The skull is a recurrent theme for Herman, and on view are several skull motifs in ceramic as well as an iconic 1980 painting that had been in the artist’s studio for decades.

New to the exhibition are a collection of coffee and dining tables. Made with a minimal, iron base, Herman places square ceramic tiles that have been painted in in a variety of colours and images, leaving it so that the owner can move the tiles around to make different compositions. In some cases, Herman’s work is installed on other designer’s pieces in the gallery. A small collection of Herman’s mezcal cups, with their lumpy, vibrant surfaces are installed on the smooth silvery shelves of a beautiful Vincenzo de Cotiis cabinet, and nearby, a small flower vase is placed on an elegant black shelf by Ingrid Donat.

Herman’s work feels timeless – his older works come across as contemporary as the ones made for the show. He never seems to shy away from his instinct, working with a sense of freedom that one can’t help but feel swept up by when experiencing it in person. California Poppies is on view through September 20th, 2026.

Carpenters Workshop Gallery

@carpentersworkshopgallery