STEPHANIE TEMMA: SWAN SONG
Anton Kern Gallery presents Stephanie Temma Hier’s Swan Song, the artist’s first exhibition with the gallery.
January 14 - February 21, 2026
The show features ten new oil paintings each set within a hand-sculpted ceramic frame, three ceramic and resin-encased drawings, and a surreal tableau of maquettes and preparatory sketches. Evoking household objects like chairs and placesettings, shoes and coats, the works form a whimsical and otherworldly feeling of home.
In its mischievous and often uncanny sense of play, Swan Song challenges our assumptions about the boundaries between subject and object, between form and function, and between two and three dimensional states of being. Paintings press outward, refusing to remain flat as their ceramic settings create unexpected depth. The artist’s drawings appear held in place by their clear resin frames, as if to keep them from coming to life. Small sculptures and preparatory fragments cluster together on a wooden table carved with watchful eyes, suggesting a site of rehearsal, accumulation, and obsessive iteration.
Before creating a painting, Hier starts by creating its ceramic frame by hand—carefully shaping it before firing it multiple times to achieve richly layered surfaces. Using a variety of both handmade and commercial glazes, she is drawn to the surprises and discoveries that are revealed to her when she places her pieces in the kiln.
Once the frame is finished, Hier starts to imagine the oil painting that will fit within it. Drawing from personal photographs, vintage print materials, and images sourced online, she allows the work’s themes to surface through free associations. The many oppositions in her work—animal/object, domestic/fantastic, commonplace/absurd—are held in tension until they give rise to a Jungian “third thing”: an uncanny form that does not resolve contradiction but embodies it and links the raised ceramic body and flat painted interior in a new hybrid life.
Within Hier’s meticulously constructed world, viewers enter into a domestic space that feels restlessly active and unresolvable. Swan Song allows familiar objects to shift away from their expected functions and meanings.