Jack Hanley Gallery is pleased to announce Elizabeth Jaeger’s fifth solo exhibition with the gallery. In a new series of black ceramic vessels, large peepholes reveal worlds of miniature scenes placed inside. Resting on handmade powder-coated wire cages, the depicted scenes and figures range in settings and size: a dormitory with neatly arranged beds, a meeting of individuals seated in a circle, someone lying on their stomach reading a book, or a single cat lounging in the safety of the hole. From a bird’s eye view, the viewer becomes witness to intimate scenes withheld from them in everyday life.
Dream-like, as if invisibly hovering above the scenery, their perspective complements the fantastical scales of hidden worlds, secretly tucked away from plain sight. Without a direct connection at first glance - a couple embraced in bed or sheep grazing in the field, solitary or among others in the office - the sentiment that seems to enclose each figure and placement in their surroundings is that of quiet solitude. A solitude that peacefully pervades the mind, drifting and reaching spheres of its own making.
Like thought bubbles, each vessel, each scenery, seems like the dream of another, a myse-en-abyme of thoughts. The vignettes aren’t specific narratives but rather depict the invisible passing of time. Routine, monotony, and boredom fill up the space in between the precisely placed office desks, while people at the beach doze off into daydreams and an empty dwelling holds the memories of times past and a waiting pet. Enveloped in their own thoughts, their isolation seems both burden and chance. In light of the circumstances of the last two years, Jaeger’s sculptures remind us that the mind is capable of creating its own gateways, holes, and caverns of imagination.
Elizabeth Jaeger (b. 1988 in San Francisco, CA) lives and works in New York, NY. She has exhibited widely in the United States and internationally. Solo exhibitions include ‘Hours’ and ‘Pommel’ at Jack Hanley Gallery and ‘Brine’ at Klemm’s in Berlin. The artist has participated in numerous group shows, most recently in ‘Clay Pop’ at Jeffery Deitch and ‘How To Survive’ at the Sprengel Museum, Hannover, DE. Other group exhibitions include ‘Mirror Cells’ at the Whitney Museum of American Art, MoMA PS1’s ‘Greater New York’, Sculpture Center’s ‘In Practice: Fantasy Can Invent Nothing New’, and the Aspen Art Museum’s ‘Zombies: Pay Attention!’. Publications about her include Vitamin C: Clay and Ceramics in Contemporary Art (Phaidon, 2017) Dream-ers Awake (White Cube, 2017) Eros C’Est La Vie (Totem, 2013) and How Other People See Me (Publication Studio, 2011). Additionally, Jaeger co-founded and operates Peradam with Sam Cate-Gumpert, a publishing house specializing in artists’ books.
For more information please contact Silke Lindner-Sutti at silke@jackhanley.com.
Elizabeth Jaeger reviewed by Jason Farago in The New York Times
Elizabeth Jaeger reviewed by Andrea K. Scott in The New Yorker