JODY ZELLEN

Figuratively Speaking

June 6 - July 11, 2026

Los Angeles, CA — CMAY Gallery is pleased to present Figuratively Speaking, Jody Zellen’s first solo exhibition with the gallery.

Jody Zellen is a Los Angeles–based artist whose multidisciplinary practice spans animation, interactive installation, app art, net art, drawing, painting, photography, public art, and artists’ books. For decades, Zellen has explored the evolving relationship between technology, communication, and human experience, consistently positioning herself at the intersection of digital experimentation and traditional studio practice. While deeply engaged with emerging technologies and interactive systems, she remains equally committed to making works by hand, combining the immediacy of drawing and painting with the fluid possibilities of digital media.

Her exhibition at CMAY Gallery, Figuratively Speaking, presents works from her ongoing series All Too Human, an expansive body of work centered on the expressive potential of simplified animated figures. The exhibition includes small monitors displaying looping animations, lenticular images, one-inch HolaCubes presenting animated GIFs, and an interactive sculpture that invites viewer engagement. Together, these works create an immersive environment in which movement, repetition, and transformation become vehicles for emotional and psychological reflection.

The exhibition’s title, Figuratively Speaking, suggests a movement beyond literal representation toward metaphor, symbolism, and poetic interpretation. Zellen’s silhouetted figures, constructed from the simplest of geometric elements: a circle, an oval, and three rectangles, become stand-ins for universal human experiences. Reduced to their most basic forms, the figures nevertheless convey surprising emotional complexity. They wander through fragmented cityscapes, encounter one another, split apart, change color, fall through openings, multiply, dissolve, and endlessly regenerate. Suspended within perpetual cycles of movement and transformation, these figures evoke the rhythms and anxieties of contemporary life while simultaneously suggesting humor, resilience, vulnerability, and perseverance.

Zellen received a BA from Wesleyan University (1983), a MFA from CalArts (1989) and a MPS from NYU's Interactive Telecommunications Program (2009). 

She was the recipient of a 2023 California Arts Council Established Artist Fellowship. She received project fellowships from the City of Santa Monica in 2021, 2016 and 2011 as well as a California Community Foundation Mid Career Fellowship (2012); a Center for Cultural Innovation Artistic Innovation Grant (2011); and a COLA (City of Los Angeles) Fellowship in 2004.

Recent installations include the Boston Cyberarts Gallery (2026); El Camino College Art Gallery (2024); Los Angeles International Airport (2017 and 2019); Long Beach City College Art Gallery (2017); the Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art, Charleston, SC (2014).

Her work has been included in more than 500 group exhibitions and festivals since the late 1980s and is in the collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Whitney Museum of Art, The Getty Museum, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, The San Francisco Museum of Art, The Laguna Art Museum, The Orange County Museum of Art, as well as in numerous private collections.