MaryKate Maher

Beyond the Mauve Zone

installation images of the exhibition at Formah Gallery, September 2023.

FORMah Gallery is pleased to present a solo exhibition by artist MaryKate Maher, Beyond the Mauve Zone. MaryKate Maher’s collages and sculptures shift between themes of energy and voids, forms and nature, and bodies and space. The exhibition’s title is from an occultist book by Kenneth Grant, where the realm of the Self was known as "the Mauve Zone.” This zone can only be reached while in a state of deep sleep, where people discover the reality of consciousness is formless and thus presented as a void.

These works are process-based, and painting, sculpture, and photography are all involved in the works though not necessarily apparent. Maher innovatively uses a variety of photo papers from luster to matte in the collage works, while the sculptures incorporate UV prints on aluminum or dibond, hydrocals, and resin. The show has different varieties of vessels and reliquaries, investigating hollow and enclosed spaces, empty and bodily, obscure landscapes, and soft architecture, ethereal and firm. They grow volumes and flatten out through color, line, light, and shadow, oscillating between shallow planes and depth. Although rooted in their materiality, there is an apparent search for the sacred in these simultaneously prehistoric and futuristic works.

The exploration of these ideas done in Maher’s recognizable visual language brings to mind many references, one of which is Ma, the Japanese concept of a pause in time, an interval or emptiness in space. Her connection to this search of self in the depths of sleep and attempt to recreate it for us harkens to the line from poet Joy Harjo, “I am witness to flexible eternity.” Maher takes the mauve zone out of the small self and more into what author Ralph Waldo Emerson called “the soul of the whole'' or what author Sophie Strand calls “the animate everything.” These are vessels and reliquaries built to hold space for the sacred nothing.

Recently, it was discovered that spiders possess an extraordinary consciousness, including minds extending beyond their bodies. The silk threads they spin out behind them are so crucial to their cognitive abilities that some scientists believe it should be considered part of their mind. This body of work investigates a place of meditative insight and dives into the blurry question, where does one person/place/thing stop and another begin? Part dream world, the works are fantastical voids within fantastical voids, the same way Ma is the time and space life needs to breathe, feel, and connect. These voids are not empty, and these works are structures holding the primordial space for growth to begin.

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Vessel and Reliquary: figure 3

2023, 14 x 9 x 51 inches

UV prints on dibond, dye sublimation prints on aluminum, hydrocal, resin, imitation gold leaf, acrylic paint, brass plate

Vessel and Reliquary: figure 2

2023, 12 x 8.25 x 24.5 inches

UV print on Dibond, hyrdrocal, imitation gold leaf, concrete polymer, resin, copper, brass plate.

(scroll down for exhibition views of “Beyond the Mauve Zone” at Formah Gallery, NYC)

Reliquary (purple eye)

2022, 20.5 x 10.75 x 3.5 in.

direct to substrate print on dibond, dye sublimation print on aluminum, hydrocal, polyester, imitation gold leaf, acrylic paint

Reliquary (white head)

2022, 18 x 9.5 x 5 in.

resin, hydrocal, polyester, dye sublimation print on aluminum, imitation gold leaf, sharpie, acrylic paint

Surface 2021

-scroll down for more works-

collaged paper, 20 x 16in.

Continuation of the collaged paper series begun in 2020. Repeated abstracted forms and color gradients mimic bodies, plants, light and space.

Echo Echo

Exhibition of sculpture and collage at Gold Scopophilia, 2021.

Collage works are 20 x 16in, sculptures visible (small shard) blue, 2020, 26 x 7.5 x 2.25in, cast hydrocal, dibond, dye sublimation print on aluminum, acrylic paint; (small shard) black, 2020, 27 x 13 x 4in, dye sublimation prints on aluminum, dibond, concrete polymers, leather, cast glass .

Red (shard)

2021, 34.5 x 7.5 x 3.75in

Resin, gold leaf, dye sublimation print on aluminum, acrylic paint, concrete

Surface

-scroll down for additional works-

A continuation of the Surface series that diverted itself during the Covid pandemic. This project became an exercise in using and reusing photographs and paper to create endless collages. As I thought about bodies, light and space during this time, the repetition of certain forms and contours continually show up.

This is a selection of a few of these works from 2020-2021. They range in size from 9x12in to 20x16in.

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Slump, Lean, Hoist

2019

wood, aqua resin, concrete, brass, stone

approximately 240 x 72 x 72 in

Site specific project curated for the Brooklyn Army Terminal exhibition, “When Artists Enter the Factories.” In Slump, Lean, Hoist, wooden beams fit together into simple geometric combinations. On top of these beams are cast aqua resin and brass forms that bend and slump around their base counterpart. Similar to cast shadows and distorted light reflected on architectural forms throughout the day, these sculptures mimic elements of the physical structures of the Brooklyn Army Terminal. They also reflect on the idea that something meant to be as strong as stone can have a moment of fragility and exhaustion.

(some images credit Kuo-Heng Huang)

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Portable Landscape

2019

wallpaper, drywall, concrete, dye sublimation prints on aluminum, resin, gold leaf, plaster

36 x 36 x 36 in

Project for the West 10th Window, Art in Buildings by Time Equities, Inc.

“Using sculpture and collage, Maher's installation in the West 10th Window creates an imagined abstracted setting. In her ongoing titular series, Maher deconstructs landscapes into forms and planes, arranged in space so that they change as the viewer moves. She draws inspiration from locations affected by extreme climates, where colors are born from high acidity or levels of air pollution.

Portable Landscape evokes Giorgio de Chirico's metaphysical paintings by drawing on sharp contrasts between light and shadow, and Constantin Brancusi's Bird in Space through its emphasis on movement over object. Merging the two and three dimensional planes, Maher plays with color, light, form, and movement to reconfigure the environment of the West 10th Window.”

Map for the Temporary Inhabitant

2013/2015/2018

aqua resin, dye sublimation prints on aluminum, concrete, concrete polymers, salt

varying dimensions, largest: 69 x 44 x 24 in

As part of the exhibition, The Disappearing Ground, at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, previous sculptures from the series Map for the Temporary Inhabitant were shown. This concept comes from nomadic lifestyles where communities are built and rebuilt on semi-permanent landmasses (like ice tundras). How does one map a constantly changing location, and what landmarks become important?

Prussian Blue

2019

resin, concrete, brass, gold leaf, prussian blue paint, stone

exhibition at Carroll Hall, Brooklyn, NY

Surface: gradients

2019

Collaged dye sublimation prints on aluminum, wallpaper, resin, gold leaf, hydrocal

30 x 22 in

Invisible Float

2017

aqua resin, concrete, dibond, dye sublimation prints on aluminum

varying dimensions, largest : 55.5 x 12.5 x 18 in

Solo exhibition at A.I.R. Gallery, Brooklyn, NY

“A.I.R. Gallery is pleased to announce Invisible Float, an exhibition of sculptures by Fellowship Artist MaryKate Maher.

In Invisible Float, Maher draws inspiration from two extreme climates with unique geology and ongoing environmental challenges: the deserts of California, near the Salton Sea, and the Icelandic tundra. Exploiting materials that reference landscape, Maher focuses on how we visually perceive open space as both flat and dimensional.

By using mostly thin planes to create her sculptures, Maher plays with expectations of form, and disrupts perceptions of volume and weight. She manipulates her materials to obscure their origins: resins are cast, sanded and weathered to look like stone; a patinated copper surface reveals itself to be concrete and foam. The work favors a particular range of hues that blends beige, black and acid yellow, mimicking a semi-natural, mineral-rich palette.

In this current body of work, Maher presents intimate, pedestal-based pieces that play slyly with formal expectations. She combines her personal vernacular (eroded textures, horizon lines, standing stones and monoliths) with that of canonical sculptors whose works explore abstraction, minimalism and land-based practice. Maher references this history of the monumental while rendering in an intimate scale.

The viewer will find photographs of color gradients inlaid into the surface of many of the works. From a distance, this reads as a recess or void. By creating these subtle illusions, the surfaces glow and vibrate, alluding to the light of the sky or refractions on the horizon. In the exhibition, one finds repeated shapes and surfaces: ethereal ovals, corrugated structures, and unexpected interruptions. Like a stutter, these repetitions operate as a question or a word reiterated again and again until it carries new currency.”

This project was supported in part by the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Grant.

Surface

collaged dye sublimation prints on aluminum, paper, dibond, resin, plaster.

varying dimensions

The ongoing Surface series are collages made with a dye sublimation printing process on aluminum that are cut and reconfigured. Some of the prints are thick and layered with additions of plaster fragments and resin. Other times the collages are layered and then re-photographed so they are flat.

The series addresses light and light refractions on surfaces. They are partners with my sculptures ( which are usually very weighted and earthy) and link to an atmosphere, the sky, or the gradients of air pollution.

Map for the Temporary Inhabitant : grey stone

2016

hydrocal, resin, inlaid dye sublimation print on aluminum

69 x 44 x 24 in

Braced Position

2014

resin, wood, c-print, gaffers tape, stone

varying dimensions, largest: 96 x 2 x 6 in

Solo exhibition at Nurture Art Gallery in Brooklyn, NY.

These works were created around methods of how I brace and hold work together during studio production. The finished works exposed moments of fragility, and raw materials. Objects are taped together, leaning against something else (like a wall) or anchored in place at odd angles.