Erica Mahinay “The Bright Place Idea”

Erica Mahinay “The Bright Place Idea”

Lyles & King (21 Catherine St.)

This event has ended.

Lyles & King presents The Bright Place Idea, Erica Mahinay’s third solo exhibition with the gallery. The new paintings and sculptures navigate conscious adjustments in attention through trace, surface, and proximity.

There is a common misconception about time traveling. One does not transport forwards or backwards to influence present events. Rather, one elongates their state of presence by reorienting current actions and intentions to parallel a future vision, which removes the spatiotemporal distance between then and now.

Mahinay starts by exploring the boundaries of linear patterns by intersecting rowed continuums on silk with dusty, rhythmic, and prismatic fingerprints. Embalmed seaweed slumps adjacent to a mirrored platform atop terrestrial steps. Collectively, a reflection of traditional perceptions of time - an inescapable progression through brief and disintegrating moments of a controllable, reactive present into an uncontrollable, chaotic future.

An alternative viewpoint is also examined through a series of non-linear, disorienting, and inverted works where remnants of wooden stretcher bars are visible on the front of the fabric. Or is it the back? Here, one confronts how movements are not strictly ahead or behind us, and that this distinction is only a matter of perspective. This set culminates with a silk supernova that overflows the vertical plane from which it hangs. Its off-centered nucleus incorporates found material produced seven decades ago, as Mahinay stretches threads from past to present.

Swirling, oceanic dyes finally traverse a new fluid grid that is unconfined by space-time axes. The burn marks - fire on water - complete Mahinay’s conjuring of a place bound not by the laws of physics, but by the quality and directionality of our own attention.

With a mid-exhibition resequencing of the works, Mahinary demonstrates how shifting spatial orientations can influence interpretation of the pieces on an individual and collective level. This experiment in proximity invites the viewer to widen their peripheral vision and observe that what is in one’s direct line of sight is shaped by antecedent and ensuing pieces, both adjacent to and distant from the work in question.

Then is now and there is here, if you allow it. What a bright place to carry ourselves to.

—R.W. Los Angeles, CA 2021

Media

• Painting
• Sculpture

ADVERTISE ON NYAB