Beyond Explanations: A Conversation with Benjamin Orlow

Benjamin Orlow is primarily known for video works and figurative sculptures that he builds in situ out of clay or has cast in bronze—works that play out over considerable periods of time not only during their creation, but also for the viewer. His most recent body of work—featured in “How Many Angels Can Dance on the Head of a Pin” at the 61st Venice Biennale—anchors the physical center of the Nordic pavilion with dynamism and substantiality, allowing visitors to witness the subtle (and not so subtle) shifts that have already affected and will continue to alter the clay as it dries. These imposing sculptures, like their outdoor counterparts, contradict the same norms of monumentality that they echo. Misshapen, dismembered, and on the verge of collapse, they reject clear messaging in favor of a resonant ambiguity that takes hold of the body, mind, and imagination.

John Gayer: The works inside the Nordic pavilion look like they belong to your ongoing “Ritual City” series. What is the significance of the title?
Benjamin Orlow: Technically, it’s one work, titled Ritual City. The term refers to an early city that, in addition to serving practical purposes, becomes a spiritual gathering place or accommodates ritualistic behavior.

JG: That might invoke Maya or Aztec cities or Mecca.
BO: Totally, but they would be extreme. It can be something simple, like a gathering of dwellings with a nearby altar or votive figure. The ancient Turkish city of Göbekli Tepe, for instance, is known for its large, decorated pillars, which weren’t destroyed or left to erode, but ritualistically buried.

But what interests me right now is a problem that we have in contemporary art with incredibly literal and prescribed ideas saying what a work is, how it operates, or how it should be experienced. I think such external justifications distract us from the core emphasis. The works that speak to me or that I want to make lie beyond such explanations.

JG: I noticed that your exhibitions don’t include artist statements.
BO: That’s right. I also curate St. Chads Projects in London, and we never include texts. It’s just about presenting the work. It’s also about trust and allowing ambiguity to exist. I think that people link ambiguity, which is feared now, to the chaotic state of the world and the profusion of insecurity, nervousness, and despair.

For me, strong work exists within the realm of ambiguity. That doesn’t mean it won’t have impact, in fact, you lose some of that when you lock things into specific readings. I also think that explicit political content is different from artistic content. Lately, those two things have been muddled in ways that do not necessarily benefit artworks or exhibition-making.

JG: One could argue that all art is political.
BO: Sure, but I think the difference is whether the work is explicitly saying, “This is what the work is about, these are the components, this is how you put them together, and this is the conclusion you should reach,” rather than being a work where you, as an artist, set something in motion—something guided by intuition that ends up being something that cannot be articulated in any other way than through that work—then allow the relationship between that result and the viewer to develop without you trying to interfere.

JG: I have to admit I usually head right to the work.
BO: Me, too. I hardly ever read those statements, and sometimes I’m afraid to read them because I think they may ruin something.

JG: They can shape one’s experience. I somewhere read that your work concerns masculinity, patriotism, and individualities.
BO: Those are not my words. For me, it’s personal and intuitive. For instance, I spent two months building the clay part of the indoor work by hand. I have no predetermined plan when I start. I use the coiling method, which is one of the basic ways of working with clay. When you’re coiling, you’re constantly making micro-decisions with your hands. It takes a long time to develop, and as I’m improvising, it continues to grow and eventually I find something in it.

For example, when I reached that point in one part, I suddenly had a very strong feeling of being a kid and looking at my knees, something you’d do after you’ve fallen, perhaps, or are crouched over. So, all these knees started to grow, taking different positions and leading upward. I went with that. And when the form wanted to lean over, I let it. I’ll also guide it a bit and occasionally, if it seems like it will collapse on itself, I’ll prop it up with something. Propping works very well during the building process, but later, when the work is done and it’s drying, the clay contracts. That is when the things I used to support it, break it.

JG: What prompted your use of clay?
BO: It’s cheap and accessible. But what made me stick with it is its emotional resonance in terms of touch. Clay is good at capturing that. It happens automatically as you are handling it. I love that; it’s very poetic. Clay has memory. If you take a piece of clay, rip it in two, then stick it together again, the break still exists inside the clay. This primal material is fascinating. It embodies all these gestures that have accumulated over time, and then I mold that. There’s something about the relationship to the bodily that also seems inherent.

JG: Seeing your works in person and in photographs did leave me wondering how to read them. Accessing intuitive feelings isn’t easy.
BO: Exactly. Hopefully, though, if I’ve succeeded, you’ll feel the resonance, since I try to make it legible. It’s possible to sense the decision-making, the intuition, the various steps that lead to the work’s materialization.

JG: Considering the amount of clay used, you must have needed help?
BO: The challenge of working the way I do is that decisions occur during the act of making. Therefore, I can’t outsource much, though I did have help with the crosshatch structure that’s inside one of the forms. Compared to the exterior, the surface area of that interior element is probably three times greater.

JG: The drying begins affecting the clay almost immediately. Collapse is just a matter of time, and no amount of propping can prevent that. Is all this part of your thinking?
BO: Yes. I think this state, which is between being finished and collapsing in on itself, is really interesting. Nothing you see exists for purely aesthetic reasons. It’s there because the structure required it. Although I try to keep it alive by adding more supports or tying it together, the work keeps evolving as long as it is on show. So, I have a conflict with the work. Whereas, conceptually, I like that it’s poignant, has depth to it, and wastes away, which is its nature, my relationship to it remains strong.

JG: Some of your works subtly point to other artworks. For me, the legs of Ritual City (2025) shown in “Statuomania” at Kunsthalle Seinäjoki recalled the stride of Boccioni’s Unique Forms of Continuity in Space (1913), whereas the figure squatting on the pile of scrap plywood in “Two Set Out, One Came Back” (Galleria Sculptor, Helsinki, 2025) evoked the demon in Henry Fuseli’s The Nightmare (1781).
BO: Input is closely related to output. I look at a lot of religious art and medieval art, and that definitely seeps in and comes out in terms of the forms. But I wouldn’t say that I think of specific references.

JG: It’s not specific—more of an inkling.
BO: What interests me more is what such prominent artworks might mean today. I think the idea of monumentality is a taboo and ripe for a complete renewal or re-investigation.

JG: That’s an interesting comment, because Komar and Melamid instigated “Monumental Propaganda” right after the Soviet Union collapsed. They believed this was the time to learn from those monuments—before they were gone.
BO: It’s as if the 20th century’s totalitarian legacy is no longer relevant. What intrigues me is seeing if we can express something else with that language, something that’s more human, more complex, which, in turn, returns to ambiguity. In the last century, ambiguity and the monumental were worlds apart.

JG: When I look at your works, I want to understand the faces. From one angle, the figures seem to deserve empathy, but from another they seem comical—cartoon-like monsters. They bring to mind Mighty Joe Young or King Kong, old movies featuring misunderstood animals, wrongly accused of being hostile.
BO: These monster narratives—like King Kong or Frankenstein—are powerful, since the empathy is directed toward these beings, which, by their mere existence, seem evil to everyone else.

JG: The head of the outdoor work is bronze, isn’t it?
BO: It is, and the idea for the supporting posts derives from the tripod-like supports propping up trees around the Giardini. Making this component paralleled the larger clay part. It was built up to a pressure threshold necessitating external supports, which then become essential parts of the work. The head, which I improvised out of clay, grew to a point that appeared too classical. I asked myself, “Do I veer away from that or let it become what it wants to become?” Ultimately, I decided to go with the latter. When it came out of the mold, its untreated surface impressed me. The making process and the desire of making it are both evident in the surface.

Then I started considering my relationship to the work, how it can be a meaningful, in-depth, and very personal relationship. I also considered that in terms of the relationships that people now have with virtual avatars. What is the relationship to these things that mirror you, that exist in this other realm? That’s why I started to do things to it, like jabbing wooden stakes into the eyes, which also appear to be shooting out. You do such things to something that is as much yourself as it is completely foreign and abject.

JG: It does look like it’s in pain.
BO: It depends on your perspective, because it changes. From some angles, it’s like it dies. It’s like a 19th-century romantic thing where you spin something that takes you through all of life’s different stages and goes into death.

JG: And then becomes amorphous.
BO: A complete natural form in the end.

Benjamin Orlow’s work, together with that of Tori Wrånes and Klara Kristalova, is on view in “How Many Angels Can Dance on the Head of a Pin” at the Nordic pavilion of the Venice Biennale through November 22, 2026. Orlow’s work is also featured in the group exhibition “Like Music in the Blood” at Thaddaeus Ropac, London, U.K., through October 1, 2026; and in “Symptoms” at Galerie Nordenhake, Berlin, through October 24, 2026.