Invited Solo Exhibition
NJH
NJH is a Southern California based artist whose striking biomorphic ceramic sculptures interrogate themes of vulnerability and self-preservation, and the tension between beauty and brutality therewithin. Each of NJH’s evocative sculptures is painstakingly hand constructed. The artist first builds the body by rolling out and layering thick coils of clay to which he adheres “thorns” that were shaped individually by pinching, carving, or press moulding.
The distinguishing feature of his works are the sharp organic protuberances that appear to defiantly unfurl from and enclose the body of the vessel; born out of the artists’ personal struggles and trauma, these “thorns,” as NJH describes them, viscerally bring to form the grace and violence required to protect oneself from a hostile world.
Hallo Series
Into the Pearly Gates (2025) reflects on the estrangement of the sacred in contemporary life, offering a sculptural meditation on the distance between the spiritual and the everyday.
This series of works emerged as a quiet resistance to that disconnection, a tactile meditation on presence, intention, and reverence. Each piece is shaped with the hope of creating small sanctuaries in everyday life, where the user can pause, breathe, and reconnect. Through the texture of clay and the rhythm of form, I wish to invite the viewer to consider moments of stillness not as luxuries, but as necessities, and reminders of the sacred that exist within and around us.
Hallo Series
24” x 17”, Ceramic
At the heart of the work is the motif of the thorn. Historically a symbol of pain, exile, or martyrdom. Here it is reimagined as a gesture of protection. These thorns do not threaten or harm, they encircle, shield, and sanctify. Embedded in sharp, curving forms and glazed in an intense finish, they evoke relics not of violence, but of reverence. The surfaces gleam with luminosity, recalling devotional objects worn by time, yet still imbued with meaning.