All Fired Up

After auctioneer Simon de Pury resigned in 2012 as the chairman of Phillips de Pury & Company, he moved into brokering private art deals—a very discreet business. But on September 18 the charming macher will be back in the spotlight, with “Fire!,” an exhibition he curated at Venus Over Manhattan, Adam Lindemann’s New York gallery. De Pury is focusing on ceramic and glass pieces by an idiosyncratic group of 12 artists—“They all work with fire,” he notes—ranging from stars like Rosemarie Trockel, Ai Weiwei, and Sterling Ruby to newcomers Young Jae Lee and Flavie Audi. The artists’ choice of materials, he says, may be a reaction to digital media: “There is a new golden age of ceramics.”