MaryKate Maher
Echo Echo
January 16 - March 10, 2021

Opening Reception in the Garden
Saturday January 16 2-5 PM
 

MaryKate Maher’s first project with the gallery is comprised of a group of collages (titled Surfaces) and three sculptures (titled Shards). These works utilize shape and gradients, and a collection of disparate materials (including cement, wood, and aluminum) to propose a perceptual experience more typically associated with nature than with the hand made.
 

The constraints of human experience are intrinsic to these works. They address space but not freedom.
 

Occasionally Maher’s oblivion is interrupted by a small elliptical gradient that functions as a void, or an eye, creating a shift in scale and topography, or animating an image that would otherwise feel purely spatial. 
 

“I was thinking repeatedly about bodies, (what is a “body”). What is space and surface when I haven’t been outside in a week? What is landscape – a place to hold objects, or a surface to hold or carry weight? An echo of real space? I thought about shifting space through flatness; movement and depth through color and planes. My practice is rooted in an enduring interest in cairns, balancing rocks, site-markers and totems. Evoking a sense of intervention in the landscape. . . Such artifacts exhibit care in their craftsmanship, which is delicate but not precious. Monoliths are shimmed from beneath to help straighten them out, and the stacking of cairns demonstrates a singular aesthetic in contrast to their practicality. Many small movements combine to create a larger, voluminous structure”
 

MaryKate Maher was born in Philadelphia, PA in 1979. She received her MFA from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 2004 and her BFA from Arcadia University in 2001. She studied at the Glasgow School of Art from 1999-2000 and attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 2008. Maher has received fellowships from New York Foundation for the Arts, MacDowell, Yaddo, Franconia Sculpture Park and Socrates Sculpture Park. Exhibitions have included A.I.R. Gallery, NY, Tiger Strikes Asteroid, NY, Spring/Break Art Show, NY, Interstate Projects, NY, The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, PA, Triangle Arts Association, NY, Franconia Sculpture Park, MN, with international exhibitions at Kunstwerk Carlshutte, Germany and Takt Berlin/Leipzig, Germany. Her work has been written about in Artsy, Brooklyn Magazine, Hyperallergic, L Magazine, BOMB, Art Zealous and ANTEmag. Maher lives in Brooklyn, NY.

Image is "Surface (29)," 2020. Collage on paper, 20 x 16 inches.