Visitor

In his first print edition, Clayton Schiff’s Visitor looks out from the shadows of a toilet paper shelter.

Set in a domestic space loosely resembling his parent’s bathroom, Visitor stems from Schiff’s childhood paranoia of lurking figures behind opaque objects. The half-obscured gaze of the lonely creature reaches out of the picture plane, as Schiff foregrounds the dynamic between observer and observed. The situation echoes a surprise encounter with a household rodent or pest.

“The character doesn’t exactly belong in this setting, but presumes that the viewer regards them more with bemusement than hostility.”