Ceramic Brussels
Secci is pleased to announce its participation in Ceramic Brussels with a solo presentation by Kevin Francis Gray. The fair opens to the public tomorrow, and the gallery will be located at Booth A25.
The booth presents Gray’s latest body of work, the Fragile Heads Series, reflecting his unwavering curiosity and deep commitment to sculptural practice. Expanding on themes explored in his recent Family and Ten Heroes series, this new collection further investigates materiality, transition, and social and cultural connections.
Each sculpture in the Fragile Heads Series features a colour-glazed porcelain bust poised on a custom-carved wooden base. While Gray has long been celebrated for his mastery of marble, this body of work embraces the unpredictability of porcelain. By working with a medium inherently prone to cracking and warping, the artist challenges traditional sculptural conventions, using rawness, imperfection, and fragility as expressive tools to reflect on the tension between resilience and vulnerability in the formation of identity.
Unlike marble, which conveys firmness and permanence, porcelain responds unpredictably to heat, pressure, and moisture, often producing unexpected outcomes. Gray deliberately retains a degree of moisture in the clay before firing, generating internal stresses that may lead to fissures during the kiln process. Rather than treating these cracks as flaws, he embraces them as an essential part of the sculptures’ visual language—embodying tension, movement, and the inevitability of transformation.
The gallery is located at booth A25!
Secci is pleased to announce its participation in Ceramic Brussels with a solo presentation by Kevin Francis Gray. The fair opens to the public tomorrow, and the gallery will be located at Booth A25.
The booth presents Gray’s latest body of work, the Fragile Heads Series, reflecting his unwavering curiosity and deep commitment to sculptural practice. Expanding on themes explored in his recent Family and Ten Heroes series, this new collection further investigates materiality, transition, and social and cultural connections.
Each sculpture in the Fragile Heads Series features a colour-glazed porcelain bust poised on a custom-carved wooden base. While Gray has long been celebrated for his mastery of marble, this body of work embraces the unpredictability of porcelain. By working with a medium inherently prone to cracking and warping, the artist challenges traditional sculptural conventions, using rawness, imperfection, and fragility as expressive tools to reflect on the tension between resilience and vulnerability in the formation of identity.
Unlike marble, which conveys firmness and permanence, porcelain responds unpredictably to heat, pressure, and moisture, often producing unexpected outcomes. Gray deliberately retains a degree of moisture in the clay before firing, generating internal stresses that may lead to fissures during the kiln process. Rather than treating these cracks as flaws, he embraces them as an essential part of the sculptures’ visual language—embodying tension, movement, and the inevitability of transformation.
The gallery is located at booth A25!
porcelain
sculpture: 38 x 25 x 31 cm
15 x 9 7/8 x 12 1/4 in
15 kg
porcelain
sculpture: 37 x 30 x 25 cm
14 5/8 x 11 3/4 x 9 7/8 in
13.6 kg
porcelain
sculpture: 36 x 28 x 28 cm
14 1/8 x 11 x 11 in
12 kg
porcelain
sculpture: 35 x 27 x 25.7 cm
13 3/4 x 10 5/8 x 10 1/8 in
12.4 kg
porcelain
sculpture: 57 x 31 x 31 cm
22 1/2 x 12 1/4 x 12 1/4 in
20.5 kg
porcelain
sculpture: 39 x 30 x 26.2 cm
15 3/8 x 11 3/4 x 10 1/4 in
13.4 kg
porcelain
sculpture: 33.5 x 28 x 27.5 cm
13 1/4 x 11 x 10 7/8 in
16.6 kg
porcelain
sculpture: 36.5 x 30 x 27.2 cm
14 3/8 x 11 3/4 x 10 3/4 in
16.3 kg
porcelain
sculpture: 38 x 31.4 x 31.7 cm
15 x 12 3/8 x 12 1/2 in
14.9 kg
porcelain
sculpture: 54 x 31 x 27.7 cm
porcelain
sculpture: 44 x 28 x 27 cm
17 3/8 x 11 x 10 5/8 in
16.1 kg
porcelain
sculpture: 41.5 x 30 x 23 cm
16 3/8 x 11 3/4 x 9 in
11.3 kg
porcelain
sculpture: 40 x 30.2 x 24 cm
15 3/4 x 11 7/8 x 9 1/2 in
Installation views, Ceramic Brussels, 2026- Kevin Francis Gray, Fragile Head #8, 2025
- Kevin Francis Gray, Fragile Head #17, 2025
- Kevin Francis Gray, Fragile Head #16, 2025
- Kevin Francis Gray, Fragile Head #14, 2025
- Kevin Francis Gray, Fragile Head #15, 2025
- Kevin Francis Gray, Fragile Head #6, 2025
- Kevin Francis Gray, Fragile Head #10, 2025
- Kevin Francis Gray, Fragile Head #7, 2025
- Kevin Francis Gray, Fragile Head #2, 2025
- Kevin Francis Gray, Fragile Head #13, 2025
- Kevin Francis Gray, Fragile Head #19, 2025
- Kevin Francis Gray, Fragile Head #12, 2025
- Kevin Francis Gray, Fragile Head #4, 2025
Kevin Francis Gray was born in Northern Ireland in 1972. He currently lives and works between London and Pietrasanta.
Kevin Francis Gray has generated bodies of work which address the complex relationship between abstraction and figuration. At the core of the artist’s practice is an interrogation of the intersection of traditional sculptural techniques and contemporary life. Rather than working towards ideals of beauty or memorial, Gray attends to the psychological effects, often relying on textural surfaces rather than facial or bodily expressions. Furthering Gray’s decade of working with marble, his new work pushes the possibilities of the artist’s sculptural practice into new territories of physical and psychological expression.
He received his BA from the National College of Art & Design in Dublin (1995) and the School of Art Institute in Chicago (1996), and then went on to earn an MA in Fine Art from the Goldsmiths College in London. He works closely with the Giannoni marble studio in Pietrasanta, renowned for its use of sculpting techniques that date back to Canova and Michelangelo. His works have been included in exhibitions at the Royal Academy, London, UK; Sudeley Castle, Winchcombe, Gloucestershire, UK; Museum of Contemporary Art of the Val de-Marne, Paris, France; Nieuw Dakota, Amsterdam; Palazzo Arti Napoli, Naples, Italy; Musee d’art Moderne, Saint-Etienne, France; ARTIUM, Centro-Museo Vasco de Arte Contemporáneo, Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain; Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Tel Aviv, Israel; and Art Space, New York, USA.
Kevin Francis Gray was born in Northern Ireland in 1972. He currently lives and works between London and Pietrasanta.
Kevin Francis Gray has generated bodies of work which address the complex relationship between abstraction and figuration. At the core of the artist’s practice is an interrogation of the intersection of traditional sculptural techniques and contemporary life. Rather than working towards ideals of beauty or memorial, Gray attends to the psychological effects, often relying on textural surfaces rather than facial or bodily expressions. Furthering Gray’s decade of working with marble, his new work pushes the possibilities of the artist’s sculptural practice into new territories of physical and psychological expression.
He received his BA from the National College of Art & Design in Dublin (1995) and the School of Art Institute in Chicago (1996), and then went on to earn an MA in Fine Art from the Goldsmiths College in London. He works closely with the Giannoni marble studio in Pietrasanta, renowned for its use of sculpting techniques that date back to Canova and Michelangelo. His works have been included in exhibitions at the Royal Academy, London, UK; Sudeley Castle, Winchcombe, Gloucestershire, UK; Museum of Contemporary Art of the Val de-Marne, Paris, France; Nieuw Dakota, Amsterdam; Palazzo Arti Napoli, Naples, Italy; Musee d’art Moderne, Saint-Etienne, France; ARTIUM, Centro-Museo Vasco de Arte Contemporáneo, Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain; Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Tel Aviv, Israel; and Art Space, New York, USA.
- Levi van Veluw
