Where Are We Going?

Clayton Schiff's new show "Lay of the Land" captures the endless quest for somewhere else

When Juxtapoz ended, or I guess I should say, when I knew it was going to end, I was devastated and lost. I had one more issue to complete, the last issue of our 30th year that would be the last issue of 2024 that would be the last issue of the magazine ever. I had a sense a big decision was going to be made, but not because we were doing poorly or the magazine was failing to sustain itself, but that 30 years is a long time in publishing and the direction that everyone felt it should go was differing and I was at a crossroads about it. It’s like being on a melting glacier and thinking the Ice Age is coming back, or that a really cold winter day was going to bring this thing back to life. It was just over, and I needed an idea.

I had seen a painting by New York artist Clayton Schiff at that time (you can see it above) that captured how I felt, I think how the world felt. It was melancholic, sort of funny, kinda weird, existential, sort “where are we going?”, and wherever it is, I’m still at a distance trying to map something that I can see. I remember writing this (okay, I don’t remember, I found what I wrote) about Clayton: “We rarely know what to do with the absurd, let alone define it. We might say to ourselves, ‘Oh, life is so absurd,’ but indeed, is it just an endless sequence (maybe an array?) of illogical events? Or, in fact, do we simply grow to understand that what is ridiculous is what makes sense. The absurd is what makes the color of life.”

So that image was the last cover. And it made sense. It felt absurd to end Juxtapoz, but then again, what was the path that was going to be taken forward? Where were we going? What could be the destination? And maybe, a little sadly, we just all needed to find a way on our own.

(Ground Floor, 2026)

This is a slightly long introduction to talk about Lay of the Land, the absolutely fantastic new solo show by Clayton Schiff on at Sebastian Gladstone in Los Angeles. I really wanted to see it, but I really wanted to see it alone. I needed a moment with these paintings because his work meant so much to me at a really difficult time. And his characters, still weird, still rubbery, are still looking for a path and, even when on it, they are pondering a new journey. There are roads, trails, maps, empty lots, night walks, rivers and streams. The journey is so long, a character has to piss on a wall. There is humor, dark humor for sure, and details that reveal themselves after multiple views, but still that sense of where are we going, are we trying to find ourselves and what is the point, really, if another journey will always present itself.

There is also a pretty honest take in the work: When we go outside and try and find something, weird things happen. Have you been outside recently? Like, have you ordered coffee, or gone to the hardware store or even just took a stroll on a Monday afternoon. Once you get around people… things are off. Things are weird. We took about 8-12 months off as social beings in 2020 and we never relearned social norms and polite Q’s. We have become new creatures. New beings. And wherever we are going, it seems like most people are just upset they aren’t looking at their screens.

And I love that this show doesn’t have screens to show how weird and unsettling a journey is. We don’t need it, we feel it. I love the work Location, because it’s that bareness of looking into the unknown, feeling like the world has become too much or the direction aimless and yet you still try so hard to make sense of it all.

(Location, 2025)

So where are we going? It doesn’t always seem, well, good, per se, but it does feel like there are ways to express this era with a bit of humor and illogical fantasy. I did write years ago about Clayton and his work that, “The ordinary becomes, rather, extraordinary. Like Gary Larson but without the subtext, Schiff is a pivotal figure in the world of contemporary art, a mixture of humor and darkness, alienation and anxious loneliness that captures the mood of a post-pandemic globe.” I feel it even more today. —Evan Pricco

Subscribe to our print edition at The-Unibrow.com // The top image is “Over There,” 2024 // All images courtesy the artist and Sebastian Gladstone