ELISA SOLIVEN
Hybrid House
September 6 - October 26, 2025
Opening Reception:
September 6, 2025
6-8 PM

McBride / Dillman is proud to present Elisa Soliven: Hybrid House, the first solo exhibition of the New York-based sculptor with the gallery. Drawing from personal memory, natural remnants, and ancient iconography, Soliven’s ceramic works blur the line between portraiture and relic, biology and mythology. The show opens September 6th and runs through October 25th, marking the gallery’s continued commitment to showcasing rigorous, embodied practices that resist easy classification.

Soliven’s sculptures sit at the edge of figuration. Their forms hold the memory of vulnerable bodies: ribs as ridged patterns, vertebrae rendered as leaves, body parts emerging from clay as if pulled from the seafloor. The artist works primarily with clay, building each piece through layers of hand-formed coils, embedded fragments, and textural surfaces. Her sculptures often take the form of vessels or totems.

At the center of this new body of work is the horseshoe crab.  The molted shell was found by the artist on Plumb beach in Brooklyn, NY.  The bust is built around its structure. Its prehistoric form becomes the head, conjuring both armor and the shape of something primordial. The bust, a traditionally rigid and reverent format, is transformed into a site of intuitive assemblage, where ancient forms and drawn surfaces converge into hybrid beings.

This exhibition presents a series of these busts, alongside new drawings that echo the formal language of the sculptures. While each piece bears its own internal logic, they collectively suggest an oblique lineage, like a speculative archaeology of forms. The work draws from Neolithic figures, tattoo linework, and the gestures of daily life, creating artifacts that feel both ancient and deeply personal.

Soliven’s work resists polish. The clay is handled with care; surfaces are drawn on, gouged, scraped, left exposed, and then glazed. There is a sense of trust in the material, of letting it speak for itself. In a time when digital exactitude dominates, her process insists on the tactile, the hand-made.

Elisa Soliven received her MFA from Hunter College and her BA from Bryn Mawr. She is a founding member of Underdonk in Bushwick and has curated several group projects including The Giving Body and Ancient Modern. Recent solo exhibitions include Amphora Nights (R&R, 2024), Infinity Weight (LABspace, 2023), and Memory in the Shape of a U (Hesse Flatow, 2020). Her work has been reviewed in The New York Times, Art Critical, Two Coats of Paint, and Hyperallergic.

Work pictured:
Elisa Soliven
Astor Totem #9
Ceramic