Solarium
November 13–December 20, 2025
Picture Theory is pleased to announce Solarium, Lauren Clay’s second solo exhibition with the gallery. The exhibition presents a new body of sculptural reliefs and freestanding sculptures that expand Clay’s ongoing exploration of architecture, illusion, and the metaphysical potential of form.
In Solarium, Clay turns to the loggia—a half-enclosed architectural space that exists between interior and exterior worlds—as both subject and structure. The loggia functions as an in-between zone: a place where air and light circulate freely, and where the material and spiritual realms meet. For Clay, it becomes a metaphor for the porous boundaries between perception and transcendence, form and emptiness, containment and expansion. Working within the motif of the arch, Clay treats its geometry as a compositional device—“a container,” she notes, “similar to the way a painter works within a rectangular canvas.” Each arched relief in the exhibition frames layered worlds that oscillate between interior and exterior views, solid and void, surface and depth. Historical references weave throughout the work.
Clay draws inspiration from Fra Angelico’s frescoes at San Marco in Florence, each composed within arched niches that fused architecture and devotion; Henri Matisse’s “The Dance” at the Barnes Foundation, designed to harmonize with the lunettes of the gallery; and Donatello’s and Michelangelo’s early reliefs, where sculptural and pictorial space dissolve into one another. In Solarium, these references coalesce into Clay’s own formal language of luminous color, intricate pattern, and subtle spatial distortion. The resulting works hover between painting and sculpture, architecture and ornament, evoking the atmosphere of a sacred threshold—simultaneously grounded and otherworldly.
November 13–December 20, 2025
Picture Theory is pleased to announce Solarium, Lauren Clay’s second solo exhibition with the gallery. The exhibition presents a new body of sculptural reliefs and freestanding sculptures that expand Clay’s ongoing exploration of architecture, illusion, and the metaphysical potential of form.
In Solarium, Clay turns to the loggia—a half-enclosed architectural space that exists between interior and exterior worlds—as both subject and structure. The loggia functions as an in-between zone: a place where air and light circulate freely, and where the material and spiritual realms meet. For Clay, it becomes a metaphor for the porous boundaries between perception and transcendence, form and emptiness, containment and expansion. Working within the motif of the arch, Clay treats its geometry as a compositional device—“a container,” she notes, “similar to the way a painter works within a rectangular canvas.” Each arched relief in the exhibition frames layered worlds that oscillate between interior and exterior views, solid and void, surface and depth. Historical references weave throughout the work.
Clay draws inspiration from Fra Angelico’s frescoes at San Marco in Florence, each composed within arched niches that fused architecture and devotion; Henri Matisse’s “The Dance” at the Barnes Foundation, designed to harmonize with the lunettes of the gallery; and Donatello’s and Michelangelo’s early reliefs, where sculptural and pictorial space dissolve into one another. In Solarium, these references coalesce into Clay’s own formal language of luminous color, intricate pattern, and subtle spatial distortion. The resulting works hover between painting and sculpture, architecture and ornament, evoking the atmosphere of a sacred threshold—simultaneously grounded and otherworldly.