NEW YORK, NY.- When we move through rigid structures within lived experience, be it religious, academic, work-related, or domestic, a delicate remainder is produced, as who we are separates from the particular channel in which we are moving. My work makes use of these existential remains. By “separate” I am describing a movement through which an inequality or difference is observed. Conversely, it is also a learning, or an addition of information. My works are meant to invoke this dynamic within our personal and societal movement. It is liminal, atmospheric, the stuff that seems like a projection but is in fact a part of the nuance of regular day to day — inequalities and separations, but also joys and pleasures. Primarily working across painting, performance and video, my practice is often centered on liminal status, either in terms of labor, politics, or physical space. I use formal decisions (saturation, invisibility, delicacy) and choreographed movements (repetitive, persistent, honed) to describe the ambient movement of people in relation to urban space.
ATM User Says is an ethereal cycle of paintings, and a video that documents a performance. The works are a contemplation on transaction and existence. In the paintings, an atmosphere of light and air describes the subtle physical relationships between a figure panhandling, the passersby, an ATM user, and the retail architecture that is the site of the panhandler’s labor. In my performance, which takes place at an ATM, fine motor skills are used in a choreography for a bank card in movement; a personal slight of hand. The compressed performance enacts what art historian Jan Verwoert referred to as “a poem with a single stanza, an ultra concisepiece [that] let[s] microcosmic form encapsulate macrocosmic conditions. (Portable Gray, Vol. 4 No. 1).
The artworks describe both a simple, and complicated relationship with labor, and between public and private activity. In the paintings, diaphanous layers in browns, ivory, and greens, touch upon both canvas and plaster. As a thought may transition from a material manifestation to an immaterial form, they speak to a threshold between realities.
-GLORIA MAXIMO, 2022
Maximo lives and works in Jamaica, New York. Her work has been included in group exhibitions at Metro Pictures, Simone Subal Gallery, Bridget Donahue Gallery, the Queens Museum of Art, and MoMA PS1 in New York. This is her first solo gallery exhibition. A new essay by Rachel Valinsky will accompany the exhibition. Please contact the gallery, office@laurelgitlen.com, for additional information or images.
*Please note the gallery address is 465 Grand Street, 4C, New York, NY (Apple Bank Building). The entrance to the building is on East Broadway. The space is accessible via elevator; please contact the gallery for access via ramp.
