“Night Bloom” brings together a new group of collages that are inspired by liminal late-night spaces, waiting for rare flower blooms, and forgotten ephemera. Still lives inspired by wild or wilted plants and dramatic, over-stylized displays are used to create these moody atmospheres.

I work with a lexicon of mirage-like forms: silhouettes, shadows, and almost navigable spaces hovering between abstraction and spatial realism–that transcends format and medium. From two-dimensional works on paper, photo paper, and aluminum, intimate in size, to large human-scale sculptures in concrete and resin (among other varying materials), I play with surface and depth, vacancy and substance, absence and presence, fleetingness and permanence.

My collage works are process-based, involving painting, sculpture, and photography. I innovatively use a variety of photo papers from luster to matte, created from personal digital photographs of empty space (void).  Those images are digitally manipulated into color gradients, printed, cut and collaged, resulting in mesmerizing spaces. I investigate hollow and enclosed spaces, empty and bodily, obscure landscapes, and soft architecture. The works grow volumes and flatten out through color, line, light, and shadow, oscillating between shallow planes and depth. – MaryKate Maher

BIO
MaryKate Maher was born in Philadelphia, PA. She received her MFA from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and her BFA from Arcadia University. She studied abroad at the Glasgow School of Art and attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. Maher has received fellowships from New York Foundation for the Arts, MacDowell, Yaddo, Franconia Sculpture Park and Socrates Sculpture Park. Exhibitions have included Hesse Flatow, NY; Gold/Scopophilia, NJ; JEFF, TX; MoCA Westport, CT; A.I.R. Gallery, NY; Tiger Strikes Asteroid, NY; Spring/Break Art Show, NY; The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, PA; Triangle Arts Association, NY, with international exhibitions at Kunstwerk Carlshutte, Germany, Takt Berlin/Leipzig, Germany and CICA Museum, South Korea. Her work has been written about in Artsy, Brooklyn Magazine, Hyperallergic, L Magazine, BOMB, Art Zealous and ANTEmag. Maher lives in Brooklyn, NY.