PLATO

We are delighted to announce Jesse Zuo and Sarah Cotton’s duo exhibition at Plato, Focus Tension. It will open at our lower gallery with a public reception on November 20, from 6 to 8pm. 

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Focus tension is the adjustable resistance of the knobs on a microscope, used to control how easily or firmly it stays in focus, a dynamic balance between concentration and strain. Both Jesse Zuo and Sarah Cotton are adept at balancing the degree to which they reveal their subjects’ physique and emotional life. They control our gaze with thoughtful composition, framing, lighting, and the amount of detail they choose to include. Even in their most suggestive paintings, both artists give out just enough to pique the viewer’s interest, while guarding their characters from being overexposed.

 

Jesse Zuo is a Chinese painter who remained in New York after completing her studies at the School of Visual Arts. Primarily painting self-portraits or images of her female friends, she focuses on quiet moments within close quarters, familiar to any painter accustomed to a solitary practice, and to any woman living by herself. Zuo’s works relay a sense of intimacy, the subject’s awareness of her own body, and a glimpse of how it could be perceived by others when she is not conscious of their gaze or feels comfortable with it. In Girdle, a woman is perched on a window sill. We catch a corner of her denim mini-skirt, the soft skin of her legs kissed by the sunlight, a sliver of her embroidered top, perhaps a fallen strap, a touch of greenery outside. A languished, sensual mood is set, the rest is up to us to deduce but not for us to see.

 

In Pleasures, named after a cheeky lettering on the sitter’s t-shirt, Sarah Cotton depicts herself with folded arms, her body cropped from the top of the lips to the belt on her jeans, her suntanned belly exposed, tattoos peaking through the netting of her sleeves, her silver jewelry ominously twinkling. A whole repertoire of the artist’s common tropes is present, meant to signify defiance, non-conformity, and vulnerability mixed with strength, which, according to Cotton, don’t always come together. “Women are expected to remain open to and for others — to be palatable, to stay in line, to give ourselves over. This body of work speaks to the reluctance I feel towards this notion, and to my wavering opinion on whether vulnerability is a strength or a weakness.” 

 

Born in a conservative environment of small town Connecticut, Cotton found it difficult to conform. Now based in Los Angeles and living a life she chose for herself, she imbues the subjects of her paintings with the same powerful agency that she carries into the world in her daily life. In another work, the heroine wears a strand of traditional pearls, interspersed with vertical lines of silver chains – Cotton’s own favorite piece of jewelry. We are left to wonder whether she is nude or just wears a strapless dress, and whether she opened her mouth to make a statement or to produce a sigh of submission. What is certain is that through the painting’s title, Speak Up, Cotton encourages her subject to do the former. 

In Focus Tension, Sarah Cotton and Jesse Zuo attempt to make sense of the way someone living in a female body is perceived, from within and from the outside: how women are identified, desired, and simply gazed upon, on their own terms.

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Sarah Cotton (b. 1994, Connecticut) is an oil painter living in Los Angeles, CA. She received a BA in Studio Art from Georgetown University (2017), where she studied photography and printmaking. Cotton’s background in photography largely informs her process and subject, with a particular focus on portraiture and evocative figuration along with an exploration of female and queer identity. Cotton has participated in solo and group exhibitions at Flower Residency, Los Angeles (2025); Shug Gallery, Norwich, Norfolk, UK (2024); Salt Ceramics, Los Angeles (2024); California Heritage Museum, Los Angeles (2023); Soft Times Gallery, San Francisco (2023); tchotchke gallery, Brooklyn (2023), and MRKT Gallery, San Francisco (2022).

 

Jesse Zuo (b. 2000, Beijing, China) is a figurative painter based in New York. Her works function as intimate visual diaries that trace the emotional landscape of a young woman navigating the complexities of displacement and belonging. Grounded in traditional realism yet reimagined through enigmatic crops and subdued or hi-key palette, Zuo’s paintings provide the audience with a freedom to interpret the time and place of the depicted moments, exploring the fluid intersections of memory and selfhood.

 

Jesse Zuo received her BFA and MFA from the School of Visual Arts (2022, 2024). Her work has been exhibited in solo and group gallery exhibitions internationally, including PLATO, New York (2025, 2024); LATITUDE Gallery, New York (2025, 2024); Eighteen Gallery, Copenhagen, Denmark (2025); Hashimoto Contemporary, New York (2025); Kasmin Gallery, New York (2025); Moosey Art, Norwich, UK (2025, 2024); Linseed Projects, Shanghai, China (2025); Steven Zevitas Gallery, Boston (2024); La Luz de Jesus Gallery, Los Angeles (2024, 2023); Abigail Ogilvy Gallery, Boston (2024) and High Line Nine, New York (2024). Zuo is a recipient of the AXA Art Prize. Her work has been featured in publications such as Friend of the Artist, New American Paintings, ArtMaze Magazine, Booooooom, and Collect Bean, among others.