Wilton gallery browngrotta arts will present Transformations: Dialogues in Art and Material from May 9-17, a Spring 2026 exhibition that explores the expressive power of materials and the inventive ways artists transform them in contemporary practice.
Transformations takes a focused look at materiality, examining how matter is shaped, reconfigured and reimagined through skilled and thoughtful engagement. The exhibition brings together artists working with a wide range of materials — including clay, silk, steel, bark, seaweed, bamboo and horsehair — highlighting both the diversity of material choices and the distinct outcomes achieved even when artists work within the same medium.
For the nearly three dozen international artists in Transformations, materials are active participants in the creative process, each carrying their own histories, constraints and expressive potential. The works in the exhibition illustrate how artists think through materials, enlisting physical matter to turn abstract concepts into tangible sensory experiences. Through these dialogues between artist and material, the exhibition bridges the conceptual and the corporeal.
The artists in Transformations exemplify what curator and historian Glenn Adamson describes as “material intelligence,” a deep understanding of the material world, an ability to read its properties and possibilities, and the knowledge required to give it new form. Installed in combinations, the works invite viewers to reconsider materials not as neutral elements, but as dynamic agents that shape artistic meaning.
“In Transformations, artists often begin with the same material, yet guided by individual instinct and imagination, they arrive at remarkably distinct outcomes,” says Tom Grotta, co-curator of browngrotta arts. “The exhibition reveals how profoundly artistic vision can reshape substance itself.”
From Kiyomi Iwata’s freestanding sculptures of spun silk and luminous wall works of kibiso — the cocoon’s first silk — to Polly Barton’s woven images formed from bound and dyed silk threads, material becomes metaphor. In cotton, Simone Pheulpin and Mercedes Vicente create forms that appear grown rather than made, evoking coral, shells and stones, while Kay Sekimachi employs split-ply and card-weaving techniques to fashion cotton cord loops that cradle shells and stones gathered from the shore.
In clay, Toshiko Takaezu’s serene column contrasts with Yasuhisa Kohyama’s vessels that seem hewn from mountainsides, and Karen Karnes’ functional pots, infused with color yet faithful to the fired clay’s natural presence, quietly resist any sense of the manmade.
Artist list (in development): Dail Behennah, Nancy Moore Bess, Marian Bijlenga, Linda Bills, Birgit Birkkjaer, Sara Brennan, Wlodzimierz Cygan, Chris Drury, Mary Giles, Norie Hatekeyama, Kiyomi Iwata, Karen Karnes, Merja Keskinen, Lewis Knauss, Yasuhisa Kohyama, Irina Kolesnikova, Kogetso Kosuge, Kyoko Kumai, Jeannet Leendtse, Dona Look, Aby Mackie, Rebecca Medel, John McQueen, Norma Minkowitz, Sung Rim Park, Simone Pheulpin, Eduardo Portillo and María Dávila, Ed Rossbach, Hisako Sekijima, Kay Sekimachi, Karyl Sisson, Polly Sutton, Carol Shaw-Sutton, Toshiko Takaezu, Gary Trentham, Mercedes Vicente, Jiro Yonezawa, and Carolina Yrrarazaval.
The exhibition will be accompanied by a full-color catalog. Learn more about the exhibition on the browngrotta arts website.
browngrotta arts, located at 276 Ridgefield Rd. in Wilton, CT, represents many of the artists who have helped define modern fiber art since the 1950s, and reflects the aesthetic and advocacy of its co-curators, husband-and-wife team, Tom Grotta and Rhonda Brown. Museum-quality artworks by more than 100 artists from 25 countries are represented through gallery exhibitions, art fairs, co-partnerships with museums and retail spaces, and an online gallery. browngrotta arts has more than published 50 art catalogs, featuring Tom’s photographs and design and Rhonda’s editorial oversight. The firm has placed works in private and corporate collections in the US and abroad, including the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Arts and Design, the Art Institute of Chicago, Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum. The curators regularly work with architects and interior designers offering consultation for commissioned artworks and site-specific installation for commercial and residential spaces.
