Are they flowers, body parts, gestures, or simply the language of form itself? Through magnification and pattern, cropping and repetition, Cult of Aphrodite invites us to abandon the urge to define and instead to feel.
Jessalyn’s work is a unique and compelling exploration of the female form, bringing a sense of vitality and balance through her use of fluid lines and confident strokes. The way her drawings reference modern masters suggests she has a deep understanding of art history, but has also created something distinct and personal through her ability to deconstruct the female form while maintaining a sense of equilibrium and vigor.
Approaching the feminine in a parallel yet three-dimensional exploration through a series of sculptures, composed of mares, pigment and finished with a layer of resin, transforming the material. Her paintings, layered with emotional resonance and rich oil textures, engage with the feminine in its most elusive, suggestive state. Subtle rather than overtly sexual, her forms hover at the edge of recognition. Her work dissolves the boundary between subject and abstraction, drawing the viewer into an immersive experience of undulating shapes and tonal gradients. By softening edges and blending hues, she creates a visual rhythm that echoes the organic sensuality once associated with Aphrodite herself.
In dialogue with Jessalyn's work, there's the series of sculptures made by Lisa Dengler with a quiet elegance that Dengler distills sensuality into minimalist curves, lines, and voids. Her forms are meandering yet precise—sculptural gestures that evoke the feminine not through representation but through essence. A single arc, a rounded aperture, a texture that catches the light —each element invites touch, observation, contemplation. Her pieces resist literal interpretation, instead presenting femininity as a spatial experience: a rhythm of light and shadow, presence and absence, full and empty.
