photo story
At first sight, Pat Lay’s vertical scrolls sit comfortably within the soaring Gothic-style Lemmerman Gallery at New Jersey City University. Their mosaic or tapestry-like forms, in glowing red, blue, and gold, echo the tall grided window panes and the elaborate ceiling. Yet once it becomes clear that these scrolls are entirely digital, the contrast generates a sense of fertile dualities.
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First, although the scrolls in this exhibition, titled Pat Lay: Hybrid, feature printed digital patterns of circuit boards—resembling enigmatic codes of an unknown system—they are meticulously and visibly collaged by hand. This digital-hand relationship creates an immediate, stimulating tension.
Second, the architectural aesthetics of the space—its Gothic verticality and stained-glass windows, typically associated with transcendence in sacred places—unexpectedly enhance the bold patterns of Lay’s scrolls, conjuring Tibetan thangkas and ancient mosaics. This new-ancient, techno-spiritual mélange within a Gothic aesthetics context evokes the early promise of the internet, often framed in utopian terms as a “New Jerusalem,” a digital sacred space where knowledge, connectivity, and freedom would flourish. We all know where that went, and none of us knows where it is heading.
It is notable that Lay’s patterns hold the same intensity and luminosity in a 12-by-12-inch collage as in her 96-by-48-inch collaged scrolls.
The exhibition also features Lay’s ceramic sculptures from 2019 to 2024. Whether placed on elegant pedestals or based on the wooden floor, they resemble animal-computer creatures. I am particularly drawn to the abstracted shapes, as in her recent Nesting Bot X2C2 (2024), a curvy fiery orange body crested with a sharp angular rectangle and thorny black shape that resembles an electronic component, nestled in an intricate zigzagged cradle mounted on the wall.
This small sculpture, next to the large, vivid KKPBMGSH62 scroll in Turquoise, gold, and red patterns, establishes a striking contrast in scale and introduces an engaging dialogue between the physical nature of the two objects.
A similar relationship appears between Soulbot B2C3 (2023) and the scroll KB095-3. Unlike the wall-mounted Nesting Bot, Soulbot B2C3 is slightly tilted and placed on an elegant pedestal. It has a curvy, intense light blue body base, a protruding cone-shaped neck, and a computer vent chip for a face. The visual dialogue between the crisscrossing of the scroll and the curvy tilted ceramic sculpture is delightful.
Two recent ceramic sculptures, Transcendent Landscape #4 and Transcendent Landscape #5 (2024), stand out as explorations of unknown terrain. Blending the archaic with the futuristic, they evoke surreal landscapes inhabited by life forms resembling snakes or birds—frozen worlds where time, life, and space converge.
These floor-based sculptural landscapes introduce a new dimension to Lay’s extensive body of work, presenting chilling tableaus of a possible future where electronic chips and organic matter seamlessly merge into new organisms scattered across barren lands. Lay’s vivid, hand-collaged digital scrolls have evolved into intricate topographies, what the artist calls “transcendent landscapes”—a cautionary tale perhaps.
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Lemmerman Gallery, third floor, Hepburn Hall, New Jersey City University, 2039 Kennedy Boulevard, Jersey City, through March 7. Information: (201) 200-3246 or www.njcu.edu.