May 7th - June 18th 2022
Gallery Hours: 24/7
miniMAC (miniature Mount Airy Contemporary)
25 West Mt Airy Avenue, Philadelphia PA 19119
www.mountairycontemporary.com
miniMAC is pleased to announce Contemplating Space, an exhibition of works by Kiki Gaffney and Björn Meyer-Ebrecht.
Nature, with all of its intricate structures and hidden systems has been providing source material for Kiki Gaffney’s work for quite some time. She is interested in the slow cycle of growth and decay, as well as the spontaneity of movement when elements of time are considered, such as wind or light and shadow. Natural patterns and structures, or ‘architecture,’ don’t follow a particular order, yet these patterns can be translated into our constructed lives through organization (grids or pattern designs, for example), so there is a connection between these visual constellations. Gaffney’s work is about her observations of these systems the natural environment – taking elements from that environment to create a new context. She is also interested in exploring the notion of space – boundary-less/open space (the natural world) and defined/closed space (design elements) with the idea of ultimately creating a contemplative space. She is attracted to imagery that may seem visually banal (such as a fallen tree) and elevating it to a higher level of awareness, creating an equivalence between blandness and emotion.
Björn Meyer-Ebrecht’s work explores ideas and functions of social space. He is interested in public architecture – designed as places for people – as the venue where individuals can define themselves spatially as social beings in relation to others.
Meyer-Ebrecht was born into post-war Germany. Modernist architecture played a particular role in his upbringing, and the drawings included in this exhibition are always also an examination of his own biographical foundations. In Germany, in particular, post-war Modernism was as much a reinvention of space, as it was a cover-up of past events, especially the crimes of Nazism. As a German raised during the post-war era, Meyer-Ebrecht’s relationship to this space is by default a deeply ambivalent one.
Despite having created immensely fraught social spaces far beyond the borders of Germany, and especially in the United States, Modernism also represents the last analog model for the democratic and egalitarian organization of space, even if these utopian promises have rarely been fulfilled. Meyer-Ebrecht’s exploration of architecture from the past asks the active question of what role architectural space can play in the present to protect, improve, or re-imagine democratic structures and institutions.
The feeling of nostalgia in some of these images may be a yearning for a time that never existed; yet the mourning of loss for this idealistic organizational model is real. Meyer-Ebrecht’s drawings respond to this nostalgia, misplaced or not: his painting transforms the found image into a place where the built space is not merely reproduced, but rather ‘re-enacted.’ Each drawing becomes a stage for this historic reenactment. Yet he also wants this stage to extend beyond image and drawing into the real space, reaching for the viewer, who is invited to become an actor on this stage. This is a hopeful place in our present time – a momentary space for collective experience and communal interaction. For Meyer-Ebrecht, art is this place for people.
Kiki Gaffney (kikigaffney.com) is a Philadelphia based visual artist. Her work references landscape, and the juxtaposition of patterns, both organic and constructed. Gaffney has been a Fellow at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and has participated in several solo and group exhibitions, including The Woodmere Art Museum (Philadelphia, PA), Delaware Art Museum, and the Southern Utah Museum of Art. Her work has been recognized by John Ravenal, former Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts; critic/curator Robert Storr; and artists Elaine Reicheck, Eileen Neff and Odili Donald Odita.
Gaffney received a BA in Studio Arts (Loyola College, Baltimore, MD), and an MFA in Painting (University of the Arts, Philadelphia, PA.) She shares a Philadelphia studio space with her husband, artist Tom Judd and budding artist and daughter, Astrid.
Gaffney is represented by Pentimenti Gallery (pentimenti.com), Philadelphia, PA.
Björn Meyer-Ebrecht (meyer-ebrecht.com) is a multi-disciplinary artist whose practice extends from large-scale drawing, sculpture, and installation. In its different modes, his work creates different vantage points to exam the relationship between architecture space and communal interaction.
Born in Hamburg, Germany, he has been based in New York City since 2000. After graduating from the University for the Arts in Berlin in 1999, he received his MFA from Hunter College in New York City in 2002.
He has had solo- or two-person shows in a variety of venues in New York and beyond, including Owen James Gallery, NYC, Galerie Susanne Neuerburg, Hennef, Germany, Studio 10, Brooklyn, NY, Matjö, Cologne, Germany, Matteawan Gallery, Beacon, NY, Storefront TenEyck. Most recently he exhibited “Uprising,” a solo-show in 2019 at Owen James Gallery, NYC.
miniMAC is a project of MAC (Mount Airy Contemporary). MAC has been curating shows in northwest Philadelphia since 2009.
