Malia Jensen | Look Out
November 2 - December 30, 2023
Opening Reception: November 2, 5:30 - 7:30 pm
The Elizabeth Leach Gallery is pleased to present Malia Jensen’s exhibition Look Out. Jensen populates the space with her imaginative sculpture and ceramic work, locating her signature dark humor and material beauty in subjects ranging from trophy-mounted seals sporting clown ruffs to carefully crafted clay traffic cones and a bronze woodpecker hard at work.
Much of Look Out builds on an oceanic theme as Jensen utilizes her visual language to consider our imperiled oceans and the myriad forces at play beneath the surface. Two salt-fired ceramic sculptures entitled Tide Table (1 and 2) depict opposing waves breaking against one another. Supported by sturdy oak tables built by the artist, the Tide Tables invite viewers to consider different perspectives, as well as giving a nod to the challenges of this undertaking. Jensen brings seals, a common and often benign presence at the ocean shore, to the forefront of our minds. She elevates the seals as subject and also, with their comical ruffs, points to ways humanity has often trained, used and commodified the animal. A series of ceramic orange traffic cones, made by incorporating clay dug from the ground at sites personally significant to the artist, have been captured in different stages of dilapidation. They serve a similar purpose here to what they accomplish out in the world: signaling a crisis, warning of instability. With the artwork in this exhibition Jensen urges us to pay attention, to look outwards, as we examine our relationship with nature and our own complex role as part of it.
Malia Jensen lives and works in Portland, OR. Jensen’s recently completed monumental bronze sculpture, Endless Pigeons, can be viewed in the plaza of the Patricia Reser Center for the Arts as part of Converge 45’s, Social Forms: Art as Global Citizenship. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally at venues and institutions including the Melbourne International Arts Festival (Melbourne, Australia), Schneider Museum of Art (Ashland, OR), Portland Institute for Contemporary Art (Portland, OR), Tacoma Art Museum (Tacoma, WA), Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design (Milwaukee, WI), Holter Museum of Art (Helena, MT), Portland Art Museum (Portland, OR), Mesa Arts Center (Mesa, AZ), Marian Goodman Gallery (London, England), Richard Gray Gallery (Chicago, IL), and Cristin Tierney Gallery (New York, NY). She has been an Artist in Residence at the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation (Captiva, FL), Ucross Foundation (Clearmont, WY), Headlands Center for the Arts (Sausalito, CA) and the Portland Garment Factory (Portland, OR); and a visiting artist and speaker at Whitman College (Walla Walla, WA), Southern Oregon University (Ashland, OR), Pacific Northwest College of Art (Portland, OR), and Massachusetts College of Art and Design (Boston, MA). She has completed numerous public commissions in the Northwestern United States, and her work is held in many public and private collections. Jensen has been represented by the Elizabeth Leach Gallery since 2006.