When I feel vulnerable or compromised I tend to crave texture, physicality, the tactile. Blame scrolling culture and the lack of immediacy that comes from too much screen time. Blame institutionalized insecurity. Let’s face it, modern life is lacking in the hug department.

Happily, art with a strong materiality can fill that void.

Jennifer Rochlin “Up Brown Mountain Down El Prieto,” 2024 (front). Photo: Robin Hauck.

Work from the likes of Simone Leigh, Sheila Hicks, Tau Lewis and Tara Donovan come to mind, artists who make sculpture insistent on softness and shape, giving the sense of being embraced by beauty. This is a category gaining traction in the art world (formerly devalued as feminine, domestic, craft) and I have a new favorite, the artist Jennifer Rochlin, thanks to her dazzling new show at Hauser + Wirth.

Jennifer Rochlin “Trans-Siberian Railway,” 2023. Photo: Robin Hauck.

Jennifer Rochlin - Paintings on Clay is an exhibit of recent hand-built terracotta vessels and accompanying paintings on view through July 12 at the gallery’s 22nd Street location in New York City.

Rochlin, who lives and works in Altadena, CA, northeast of LA, paints stories, patterns, flora and fauna in a raw, whimsical, irreverent style. Her paintings on hand-sculpted clay pots have developed the most enthusiastic following, but the show’s 2D paintings complement the overall experience, like sketches for larger works.

Rochlin prioritizes color, movement and frank, funny, diaristic storytelling and has developed a practice of biting her clay which she later paints to look like bruises. To me these elements make her work more intimate and exciting than some of the important women ceramicists in whose tradition she follows, artists like Magdalene Odundo and Betty Woodman. Her pieces are open like poppies bearing their centers to the sky.

Jennifer Rochlin “Paintings on Clay,” installation view. Photo: Robin Hauck.

“Peacock and Gabriolino Stream,” 2023. Photo: Robin Hauck.

Walking into “Paintings on Clay” on the gallery’s second floor feels like walking into a garden in bloom. As sunlight pours in through the street-facing windows, the pieces rise up to meet it, each shaped and contoured in its own unfastidious way. There is color everywhere: greens, oranges and chartreuses in “Green Tapestry with Poppies and Bites” 2024; lilac and terra cotta red in “Peacock and Gabriolino Stream” 2023; rose pink behind a brown bear and her cubs in “Pure Color” 2023; and dark purple irises rimming the honeycomb shaped urn titled “Trans-Siberian Railway” 2023 which tells the story of the artist’s travels on the Trans-Siberian railroad in Russia. There are flowers, mountains, animals, patterns and stories – lots of and lots of stories.

Originally trained as a painter, Rochlin translates her two dimensional mark making skills on to her three dimensional shapes with the ease of someone who’s found their perfect dance partner. Embracing the unpredictability of terra cotta, she sculpts her vessels from coils and slabs, building them up entirely by hand. She uses underglaze, glaze and a scratching technique called sgraffito to achieve the signature uncontrived style that adorns the surfaces.

Her vessels are bulbous, curved, surprising, each one like a body on which she has written parts of her story. Moving around each piece, experiencing them “in the round,” it’s like we are reading a diary written on the artist’s skin. We see lovers, parties, travels, carpets and patterns. We see her wrap her fishnet-stockinged leg around a boy whose yellow shirt she’s pushed up as she kisses him.

We see her painting a pot in front of a bridge, hugging a friend in front of a house, looking longingly as a lover plays guitar. All the while animals watch (“Moonlight,” “Pure Color”) and nature’s patterns brighten the garden (“Peacock and Gabrielino Stream,” “Moonlight”).

Each piece varies in size and shape, made intentionally without planning. Rochlin lets the material lead. Bumps, dips and irregularities mimic those of the human body. In imperfection and variation she finds honest expression. The trust she shows the clay is mirrored in the trust she shows the audience. The pieces are open mouthed, telling their stories to passers by.

Rochlin is a fixture on the Los Angeles art scene and she is famous for inviting others to participate in her work. That could mean biting – see “Community Bites (Cal State Long Beach Ceramic Arts),” 2020, acquired by SFMOMA – or painting.

Jennifer Rochlin “Honey Pot,” 2024. Photo Credit: Keith Lubow.

The Hauser show’s pièce de résistance,“Honey Pot,” 2024 came together with the help of 22 artist friends whom Rochlin invited to paint their own interpretation of a vagina on the hardened yet unfinished surface. Contributors include painters Hilary Pecis, Jen Guidi, and Blair Saxon-Hill. The story goes that Rochlin put “Honey Pot” in her trunk and brought it to the opening of Evan Holloway’s show at David Kordansky gallery. The result would be hilarious if it wasn’t so poignant. As a female artist working in America, Rochlin has experienced the shock of having her rights stripped away, her belief in her reproductive equality shattered. She makes pottery in a post-Roe world.

Jennifer Rochlin, “Community Bites (Cal State Long Beach Ceramic Arts),” 2020. Photo Credit: Jeff McLane.

If you’ve been to Altadena you’ll know it’s parched. There’s color, but not the verdant, vibrant color Rochlin employs in her nature scenes. Her garden is aspirational. It’s “better than the real thing,” like the title of the Frieze Art Fair held in The Shed a few blocks up from the gallery. Like her dreams and memories, aspirations are ephemeral. Her sculptural objects give them shape, even as they remind us how easily they can be shattered. They have heft and solidity, but are by nature vulnerable. Everything is so vulnerable. With one push, they could fall off their plinths. Our time is short, our survival is precarious. Our bodies hold answers. But they are not forever.

The show reminds us that our collective bodies are at risk and collective action is our only hope.

“I’ve always equated clay with the humanity that’s within us, fragile like our bodies. It can tip over. You have it on its toes, but if you push just slightly on the wrong pivot, it will break your heart.”

— Magdalene Odundo

Jennifer Rochlin’s frank materiality, color and storytelling bring a contemporary revisioning of the ancient art of sculptural pottery. A show full of impulse, humor and poignancy, “Paintings on Clay” catapults the artist to new heights of significance at a time when artwork empowering the body, on the body and about the body are of the most urgent significance to women.