Erica Mahinay
Surface is everything and nothing. I think of it as a skin, a
membrane, that seduces and acts as a penetrable boundary.
Reassembled and reconstituted, these surfaces approach the
complexity and absurdity of a contemporary human condition
in which options for reinvention are countless and accessible.
I integrate the historical trajectory of cut or collaged surfaces
in abstract painting, and trace the fine line between self-care
and self-obsession. Gold leafing adorns while highlighting
imperfections. The thinness of surface and tenuousness of
illusion are revealed through translucent fields of color with
stitched divides, painted portions, and an occasional wrinkle or
pucker. Flirting with representation, I source the still life, the
nude, or the landscape. Painting becomes a visual notation on the
cusp of articulation. Always teetering on the edge of becoming
a “thing,” the works bask in an uncertain ontological status and
manifest a contemporary condition in which composing and
redefining the self becomes center.
I wish to offer present-moment, tactile experiences as a space for
reckoning with imperfection, vulnerability, mortality, and failure.
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