HEARTBURN

About the Exhibition

HEARTBURN is an accumulation of soaked and saturated vessels where physical weight and labor become a dense, emotional place.

Over massaging a meaty pulp, stretching material around corners and across lengths, hands are stained with deep metallic red. Agitating and vibrant the color pours over edges, collecting in puddles on the ground. A low steady hum settles into the crevices of the room.

Forms are continuously negotiated, repeatedly rendered, redundantly labored. The body is distilled and present in every material and mark: wine, cadmium, clay, paper; pinched, rolled, steeped, drenched, drunk. Objects from the studio and home become affixed to the work itself, shifting from tools for concrete actions to abstractions for a new, imaginary landscape. This space holds and overwhelms. It is acidic and nurturing, funny and wretched, saturated and pale: the friction of feeling, the heartburn.

About the Artist

Brittany Mojo was born and raised in Northeast NJ, moving to California a decade ago to pursue her BFA in Ceramics from California State University, Long Beach. She received her MFA from UCLA in 2016. She currently teaches ceramics and sculpture at Cuesta College. She is a member of the artist-run collective, TSA LA.

Interested in the nuance of place, and the objects and bodies therein, Brittany looks to her studio and home to investigate the physical world. Translating everyday objects through her hands, she relates the permanence of traditional ceramic techniques to the perception of gestural and quick form. The clay holds her hands and records the moments of its making, capturing action and reflection, both slow and fast.

Her objects often have an intimate relationship to the body, either as a tool for or container of. Using materials such as paper, plaster, metal, wood, and clay, the emphasis is on this importance of the hand, relating the work to time and labor and its relationship to the duality of being--how things can simultaneously be both happy and sad, heavy and light, beautiful and animal.