Michael Mahalchick: Ghost Maps
Michael Mahalchick: Ghost Maps
November 4- November 27, 2022
Opening Reception: First Friday, November 4 6:00-9:00 pm
There will be a performance by the artist at the opening reception.
Practice Gallery is pleased to announce the opening of a solo exhibition of new work by New York-based artist Michael Mahalchick. Mahalchick’s work is characterized by a compelling, often visceral materials and objects that can be simultaneously playful, sexy, and repellant. In this recent work, Mahalchick casts colorful tinted latex forms from discarded plastic packaging and arranges them into informal grids. The colored latex forms blister and sag, suggesting skin, vulnerability, and impermanence, but also some kind of domesticity and beauty. During the opening reception, Mahalchick will present a performance in the installation.
Artist’s Statement: Ghost Maps
These works are made by casting, in latex rubber, the interiors of vacuum formed plastic packaging which then are fastened together to form gridded arrangements that suggest modernist paintings or decorative quilts. The richness of their color comes from the process used to create the works which requires the application of many thin layers of tinted latex until the desired thickness is achieved after which they may be pulled from the mother form. The independent casts are then composed into larger formal arrangements and adhered together to form single units. Neither completely abstract nor definitively representational these works exist in a liminal space. They are neither here nor there while simultaneously here and there.
The plastic packaging from which each of the independent elements of the compositions are cast are forms that have lost their function. Tossed once their value has been depleted, they become haunted objects of abjection reminding us of our relentless desire to consume and are quickly banished from sight lest we be embarrassed by their queer presence. They point to the objects they once served but are now estranged, orphaned, and bearing only a resemblance to their origin. Seemingly lost and unredeemable, repurposed, they take on a new life. They are reborn not in service to something outside of themselves but as dignified carriers of their own unique identity. Mothers reproducing replicas of themselves in defense of their own inherent value. Carriers of the memory of absence manifesting as a temporary presence. They are ghosts, born to die and dying to live, ephemeral spirits looking to deliver a message to the medium that the medium is the message.
Artist’s Bio: Michael Mahalchick (b. 1972, Pottsville,PA) lives and works in Brooklyn,NY. His work has been exhibited and he has performed in numerous venues domestically and abroad. His most recent exhibition, US, was presented at Canada, NY, NY in 2021 and was accompanied by a catalog documenting almost twenty years of exhibitions and performances. His works are included in the permanent collections of the New Britain Museum of American Art, New Britain, CT and The Birmingham Museum of Art, Birmingham, AL. He received his BFA from the Tyler School of Art, Philadelphia, PA in 1993 and his MFA from California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, CA in 1995.
