Cindy Hsu Zell and Carmen McNail | May 2 - 30, 2026

Glass Rice is proud to present Between Us a duo exhibition of new sculptures by Cindy Hsu Zell and paintings by Carmen McNall. In this exhibition, both artists approach the body as something both held and continually unfolding—shaped through gesture, embedded in material, and extended across time. Suspended between what feels ancient and what has yet to arrive, these forms suggest that the body can carry multiple moments at once.

Zell’s ceramic wall works emerge from an intuitive, process-driven practice grounded in touch and perception. Her Gestures series gives form to fleeting bodily movements—an embrace, a lean, a subtle shift in posture translated into softly contoured shapes. Fired clay preserves the memory of softness, holding these movements in suspension as both record and transformation. Drawing from the Light and Space movement, her luminous surfaces refract their surroundings, engaging in a playful dialogue between color, light, and shadow. These works hover between artifact and proposition—equally suggestive of something unearthed and something not yet realized by inviting the viewer into a shifting field of reflection and embodied perception.

McNall’s practice approaches the body through a hybrid material language of painting and wood-carving, where intricate patterns, carved texture, and expanses of saturated color coexist. Her faceless, goddess-like figures occupy interior landscapes that collapse distinctions between the ancient and the speculative. Positioned in states of rest and quiet strength, they function as vessels carrying tension, energy, and intuition across their surfaces. Through carving into the painted ground, McNall embeds gesture directly into the structure of the work, reinforcing the physicality of the handmade while suggesting a deeper continuity between body and environment. These figures appear timeless and otherworldly, inhabiting a space where histories and futures fold into one another.

Together, Zell and McNall approach the body not as a fixed image, but as something continually shaped through gesture, perception, and material. Where Zell distills movement into minimal, abstracted forms, McNall expands it into a symbolic and figural language; where Zell’s works engage through light, reflection, and subtle spatial shifts, McNall’s unfold through pattern, texture, and narrative presence. Across these approaches, the body emerges as both form and vessel in Between Us—something that holds, carries, and transmits experience across time, reasserting the handmade and the sensorial against increasingly disembodied modes of living and seeing.

CARMEN MCNALL

Using a unique process that combines painting and wood-carving, Carmen McNall’s work balances intricate patterns, stretches of bold colors and textured mark making. Her practice relates directly to the handmade in both subject matter and execution, opening a dialogue on the relationship between people, their environments and what inherently fastens us to our surroundings, examining the empowering qualities these places retain.

The faceless figures in McNall’s work resemble Goddess like muses as they rest in dynamic yet effortless poses. Each one embodies strength and wisdom alike. They rest within their own elements, surrounded by tranquil interior landscapes that inhabit both ancient and futuristic realms. Through her work, she explores the body as a vessel such as vases and containers, as well as human forms. She investigates all that is held within our worldly form: memories, tension, energy, healing properties, intuition and how all these aspects manifest into movement.

CARMEN MCNALL

Using a unique process that combines painting and wood-carving, Carmen McNall’s work balances intricate patterns, stretches of bold colors and textured mark making. Her practice relates directly to the handmade in both subject matter and execution, opening a dialogue on the relationship between people, their environments and what inherently fastens us to our surroundings, examining the empowering qualities these places retain.

The faceless figures in McNall’s work resemble Goddess like muses as they rest in dynamic yet effortless poses. Each one embodies strength and wisdom alike. They rest within their own elements, surrounded by tranquil interior landscapes that inhabit both ancient and futuristic realms. Through her work, she explores the body as a vessel such as vases and containers, as well as human forms. She investigates all that is held within our worldly form: memories, tension, energy, healing properties, intuition and how all these aspects manifest into movement.

Zell’s work is process and material-driven, with individual pieces serving as studies on gestures and perception. Ethereal finishes play with refraction and nostalgia, unsure if they're artifacts from a distant past or a far-off future. Inspired by the Light and Space movement of the 1960s-70s which emphasized atmospheric and sensorial experiences, her sculptures examine the playful dialogue between color, light, and shadow as they respond to, absorb, and reflect their surrounding spaces.

Her work has been acquired for private collections around the world and has been featured in Domino, Luxe, Dwell, and Surface magazines, as well as exhibited at Alcova Miami and the Affordable Art Fair in New York.

Images:

Embrace in Grey Mirror (2026), Cindy Hsu Zell, Glazed ceramic in oak frame, 11 x 9 x 3.5 in.

A Meeting of Us #3 (2026), Carmen McNall, 30 x 40 in., Acrylic on hand-carved wood panel