By Laura Meyers
Lauren Clay uses paper to sculpt clunky objects that contemplate an uncertain utopia. Adorned with feather-like fringes of paper, the objects often glow like kryptonite from some inner light source. With a fanciful, bold, and candy-like palette the work evokes a neo-nostalgia for a generation struggling with its cultural identity in a simulated environment. Spiritual, whimsical, and yet oddly concrete, Clay’s sculptures and installations seduce the viewer into a sugar-coma that is somehow simultaneously blissful and lurid.
A SCAD alumna, Clay lives and works in New York. She hails, however, from the sunny suburbs of Atlanta. She discusses the concept behind her recent exhibition titled “Nameless Namer” held at the Whitespace Gallery in Atlanta.
Connector: Your work has a very distinct color palette. Can you discuss the relevance of this palette, and its possible gender associations?
Lauren Clay: In my current work I tend to think of color as a pure system, and I tend to make decisions about color without letting associations or symbolic meaning of color affect my decisions. I’m more interested in pure color as a symbol for the sublime, for example Yves Klein’s International Klein Blue, James Turrell, or Anish Kapoor’s pigment sculptures. In this way the color choices become much more intuitive. I’m also very interested in the way certain colors cause certain kinds of light/color phenomena, such as how they reflect colored light into the environment. Certain colors tend to do this more than others I’ve found…and it just so happens that pink seems to be one of the main colors that do this so I tend to use it a lot.
Originally my reason for using pastels in my work was a play on modernist reductionism, which is always associated with the masculine and heroic. It occurred to me that if I take a pure hue and reduce it down to its’ lightest tint, it becomes a pastel and is automatically associated with the feminine. So I really liked the irony of this play in earlier work, but now my color choices are much more “scientific” and formal than symbolic. And my work is not really about modernism anymore. It’s about place and lack of cultural identity in consumer culture, so my colors also reference consumer color choices, and pop culture.
The Worlds Were In His Speech But Now They’re In Reach, 2008
acrylic on cut paper, acetate, foam, 30″ x 17″ x 17″
Connector: Your installations function well because of this strong environmental component of your work. Can your sculptures function outside of their installation space?
LC: They can work either way depending on the particular piece. I think they are most able to “transport” the viewer when multiple sculptures and wall paintings are in a space and start to work together, in the same w
ay that furniture in a room comes together and works to create a space. Sometimes the singular sculptures can do this too, but it varies from piece to piece I think.
Connector: In addition to the installations, you also draw. How do they inform each other?
LC: The drawings are important to me because within then I have a lot more freedom than I do in the natural/3D/sculptural world. In the drawings I can control every aspect of the space, gravity, atmosphere, etc., but in my studio or in the installation space I don’t always have this freedom or ability. The sculptures and drawings tend to grow side by side simultaneously and they do affect each other, but I don’t start out with the drawing and then create the installation or sculpture. They usually develop together and I go back and forth between the drawing s and sculptures.
The Worlds Were In His Speech But Now They’re In Reach, 2008
acrylic on cut paper, acetate, foam, 30″ x 17″ x 17″
Connector: Most of your sculptures are made from cut paper. Can you talk about the hand-made or craft quality this lends to your work?
LC: I started out with a background in painting and drawing, so my entire knowledge of making things was mainly based in that realm. Gradually the drawings became larger and larger and more and more sculptural, (the Big Fat Monochrome series, for example). Eventually they just came off the wall and out onto the floor. My knowledge of making was and is still based in drawing and painting. So it was natural for the construction aspect of my work to remain in the painting realm, and cutting (which could be considered an extension of drawing). It was important to me to be making the “thing,” rather than just illustrating the “thing,” so I think that’s why it was so important for my work to become three dimensional because it’s about space and placeness. So I just started making them in the best way I knew how, and I just figure out a lot as I go. I really have no knowledge of the technical aspects of making sculpture. But I don’t really think about my work fitting into the “Craft” genre. I think craft, the handmade quality of the object, is so important, but it’s something that is currently out of style. I think it will have a comeback though.
Your Place, My Place, Everybody’s Place, 2006, detail, wood, acrylic on cut paper, pom poms, electric lights, 120″ x 100″ x 50
Connector: Some of your work seems to walk a line between celebratory and memorial, for example “Your Place,” “My Place,” “Everybody’s Place” or “Big Fat Monochrome with Party Streamers.” What is the importance of this tension in your work?
LC: Those two pieces are celebratory in a very deadpan way. I like to be kind of silly and/or deadpan or mischievous in some of the work. For “Your Place,” “My Place,” and “Everybody’s Place,” I was interested in the scale of the sculptures to the space and how they were similar to the furniture, so I tried to heighten that feeling by making the installation symmetrical, something that people tend to do in domestic environments. Maybe this symmetry makes it feel like a monument, and also because of the stepped podium-like shapes.
Connector: Yes, your work definitely holds a tension between sincerity and sarcasm. This comes across in the spiritual undertones of your work. Can you explain how you are using these to relate to placeless-ness or utopia?
LC: I see significant links in the aesthetics of purity found in modernist practices, and the aesthetics of purity found in the American Protestant tradition of utopia. Paradise comes in many different forms throughout the old and new testament, for example: Eden, Zion, the Promised Land, Abraham’s Bosom,and the new Jerusalem, to name a few. If you read the description of the new Jerusalem in the book of Revelation, the new celestial city is essentially a cube (Revelation 21: 16) — which I think is a perfect example of this aesthetic of purity I associate with modernism. By linking these two seemingly disparate subjects, I also hope to reference the proposition that minimalism evolved from a Puritanical American heritage.
I’m interested in the ideas of transcendence and sublime space that some modernists found in their work, and also in the utopian religious communities that groups like the Shakers constructed in an attempt to develop a form of “heaven” on earth. The types of formal decisions that accompanied these communities often included extreme order, simplicity, asceticism, and preplanning.
Overall I’m interested in the tradition of transcendence that accompanies modernist and puritan ideas of space. Lately I’ve become specifically interested in monochrome painting. Many painters throughout the 20th century used the monochrome, or “blank painting” to reference the sublime or the unknowable. For example, Malevich’s “White on White,” which he linked to ideas of a reformed society and a pure, “zero-degree” of painting — a white square floating in pure white space. Or Yves Klein’s monochromes, which were a pictorial way of luring the viewer into a complete and total absorption with “the void.” I’m interested in the way both modernists and Protestants construct place or envision space as a way of communing with transcendence.
Little Crumb Bum Keepsake, 2006
acrylic on cut paper, wall painting, pvc vinyl, wall painting, sculpture: 18″ x 14″ x 42″ installation dimensions variable