Kristen Jensen

Lives and works in Brooklyn, NY, USA

Artist statement

My artistic practice comprises sculpture, drawing, and performance. Each aspect plays a role in questioning subjective relationships to physical and mental space, form and emptiness, and the often-imperceptible division between. I consider clay my “home” medium and am invested in its relationship to the body, material memory, and historic use. The ceramic works are often created using atmospheric firing methods such as wood firing: the highly unpredictable outcome serving to upend the measured and controlled method by which the clay forms are handbuilt. The resulting containers create a space to hold the psychological and emotional complexities of life in an increasingly mediated, digital world. They draw on the communal traditions in ceramics from the necessity of groups of people necessary for a five-day wood kiln firing to communities in Mexico whose daily lives revolve around the production and use of clay. The materials that I use include their history, varied meanings, and symbolic potential and are at the forefront of my practice. The used clothing and domestic textiles incorporated into the soft sculptures are culled over years from both family and strangers, or found in my immediate surroundings on walks that take me along The Linden Hill Cemetery where I collect synthetic flowers blown from the graves. As the size of my ceramic forms increased, I started creating soft sculptures that literally and metaphorically offer support. They show the physical weight of the...

Artwork