Jen Clay: This World Doesn’t Belong to You

Jen Clay’s first solo exhibition with the gallery, This World Doesn’t Belong to You, focuses on her recent performative objects and quilted wall hangings. In an essay that accompanies the show, curator Tyler Emerson-Dorsch considers Clay’s references to behavioral science, popular culture and cultural theory, especially the concepts of cosmic horror and cosmic pessimism, in relation to a style she calls friendly aesthetics. 

“[Clay’s] rich multimedia practice manifests monsters and their worlds. On the surface, her non-human figures are soft, charming and sweet. With hands and feet evoking talons or pincers, appendages drape over the creature’s bulk, and a viewer can peer beneath, where seed sacs lie. Often in these crevices phrases hide in curving lines of stitched script. Clay first made versions of these anamorphous forms to illustrate the hallucinations which populated her childhood. Art and behavioral analysis were both fields of study which gave her the ability to understand and communicate those experiences. Her research scope widened to encompass many instances of anxieties, fears and phobias experienced in society and culture at large. In a world where we find comfort in explanations, she says that she is ‘most interested in areas where there is no category.’”

–“Terrific Visions,” An Essay by Tyler Emerson-Dorsch. © 2023