Muted washes of pastel green and dusty rose emerge like a soft blur from the dark, earthen body of the clay. There is a viscous tension held within the slick, glazed surfaces, as if the entire form is caught in a flux, melting away only to be crystallized into a cool, shivering solid. With their irregular silhouettes and their swelling, obtuse surfaces, these pieces suggest a certain primitive, botanical clumsiness, as if the clay itself is pushing upward in a slow, unpracticed bloom. Like woodland sprites, figures of puppies, cats, mushrooms, and carrots ghostly materialize from these sculpted scenes.
In Devon Chen’s Solo Exhibition at All’Bout Clay Studio, New York, her ceramic installations interlock with rhythmic precision, carving out a cave-like sanctuary of delicate intimacy. Centered on the tender rituals of the everyday, these works—boots, vases, vessels—act as spatial loci that pose a quiet yet potent inquiry: What is it that surrounds me, and what minor desires do I hold and sustain? Through the arrangement of a cage, a ladder, and a near-life-sized canine sculpture, Chen constructs a heterotopia reminiscent of a whimsical theme park. Infused with Taiwanese folk cosmology, Chen employs a tone of mischievous, childlike innocence to guide us toward a state of playful detachment, where the familiar rituals of life are observed through a lens of surreal reflection.
Titled The Dog is Busy Having Hotel Breakfast, the exhibition reads almost like a prose of post-human fairy tales. An ethereal and unsettling temperament pervades much of the collection, where the titles provide a precise orientation within the imaginative voids left by these tableaus. If you whisper the titles—‘Boots With Hungry Ghost,’ ‘Carrots For Who?’ ‘Would You Share Your Mushroom, Little Dog?’—they begin to map a suspended, edible tether between flora and fauna. Here, food remains the most visceral allegory of longing. In the absence of salient human gestures, these works depict a liminal state of consumption. Consumption, a seemingly absent yet frantic gesture, quietly bridges the binary dynamic of each of the works. The recurring motif of the dog exists in a perpetual ‘next moment,’ about to devour the plant, yet forever held back by the stillness of the glaze. This incomplete consumption transforms a predatory urge into a fragile aesthetic of suspension.
In her seminal work Our Aesthetic Categories: Zany, Cute, Interesting, Sianne Ngai maps these descriptors to the core functions of late capitalism—production, consumption, and circulation—revealing how they govern our modern affective life. Chen’s installations function as a living map of this triad: the cute vulnerability of the ceramic forms seduces the viewer into a false sense of security, only to be disrupted by the zany intensity of a hunger that never ends. It is within the interesting void—the space between the object and its cryptic title—where we are forced to reconcile our own consumption of these ‘minor desires.’
Yet, Chen’s work ultimately leans toward a more tender reclamation; as the pieces retreat into their utopian cavern, the frozen tension of desire begins to soften. This is not a dissolution of seriousness, but a miniaturization and privatized softening of the grand capitalist machinery, re-contextualizing its frantic cycles into the quiet intimacy of the everyday. Within this aesthetic of ‘gentle melting,’ the dog and the plant are somehow momentarily liberated from the weight of human metaphor—suggesting that perhaps, in the absence of man, eating is simply eating, and there is a profound grace in remaining within this unapologetic cuteness.
Words Weifan Mo
Devon Chen, The Dog is Busy Having Hotel Breakfast, All’Bout Clay Studio, New York
About
Devon Pin-Yu Chen is a visual artist based in New York City from Taipei, Taiwan. She works across sculpture, ceramic painting and moving image, primarily in ceramic. She holds an MFA in Visual Arts from Columbia University and a BFA in Fashion Design from Shih Chien University. Devon is the recipient of the Andrew Fisher Fellowship. Notable recent exhibitions including her solo shows The Dog is Busy Having Hotel Breakfast at All Bout Clay, New York, NY(2026), HAPPY ISLANDS at Nguyen Wahed, New York, NY(2026); Selected Group Shows April at Nguyen Wahed, New York, NY(2026); Come Rot In My Bed at Accent Sisters, New York, NY(2026); Fault Lines at The Blanc, New York, NY(2025); PLAY at LeRoy Neiman Center for Print Studies, New York, NY(2025) and Currents at SK Gallery New York, NY (2024). devonchentw.com
Weifan Mo (Michelle) (b.2001) is a writer, creator, and curator who graduated from the New School for Social Research (Philosophy MA Program), with scholarly interests that encompass aesthetics, phenomenology, affect studies, Ancient Greek philosophy & drama, and East Asian diasporic literature & films. Her academic and creative initiatives revolve around interdisciplinary artistic practices that channel our intellectual life into everyday experience. She employs the project of aesthetics study as a filter to encapsulate the affective dynamics surrounding individuals within modern and postmodern contexts. Her recent curatorial projects include Ornament: Her Minor Rituals (Apr 10–Jul 10, 2026) at LATITUDE Gallery, A Lure, A Lament (Jan 16–30, 2026) at Gallery 456 | Chinese American Arts Council, Fleeting Hues of Passage: Duo Exhibition of Wendy Wei & Edmund Bao (Jan 24–Feb 7, 2025) at Gallery 456 | Chinese American Arts Council, and Wearable Ontologies: Ruihaonan’s Box Clothes (Nov 6–Nov 10, 2025) at THE BLANC. @weifan__m
