Ceramic Flower Fractal Black 5

Minimalist wall art usually means restraint, and Ceramic Flower Fractal Black 5 delivers restraint with a slightly unsettling edge. The name "Fractal" started as a studio joke about how the petals kept splitting into smaller versions of themselves, and the joke got a SKU number before anyone thought to stop it. In matte black, it reads less like a flower and more like something etched into an expensive watch face, which is either the highest compliment this piece has received or the strangest. At Chive Ceramics Studio, artisans shape this piece by hand, the branching pattern never quite repeating from one to the next. It goes up with a single screw and stays there permanently, needing no water no upkeep no seasonal attention of any kind. A cluster of Chive ceramic wall pieces sits in SFMOMA's own museum store, Fractal Black among them, not far from actual minimalist paintings that took considerably longer to finish.