TRANSOM

Alex Paik | Magnolia Laurie

January 17 - February 23, 2019

MONO Practice Baltimore is delighted to present Transom, works by Magnolia Laurie (Baltimore) and Alex Paik (New York City). Transom is the inception of Mono Practice’s new program where the focus is to bridge studio practices that move beyond geographical and studio constructs. Please join us for Transom’s closing reception on February 23, 2019.

Alex Paik

Alex’s works explore a single geometric form as its subject and the ways that these forms relate to each other through repetition and tessellation. The layering of units to form other compound shapes mimic the way a fugue’s subject dissolves, recombines, and forms new harmonic relationships as it is transposed, inverted, and folded into itself. He uses repetition not so much as a compositional device, but more as a way to explore and develop the possibilities of each unit. Or, to borrow Glenn Gould’s description of Bach’s late fugues, to “give the impression of an infinitely expanding universe.”

The geometry in his work not only relates to the architecture of contrapuntal music, but is also a way to give structure to the reflected color from my painted strips of paper - a way to provide an architectural scaffold from which color harmonies and the work’s final form are generated. The color relationships are the vehicle through which the geometry of each individual unit dissolves and recombines with the surrounding units and the rest of the piece.

Alex Paik is a Brooklyn-based artist whose work has been shown at galleries and art fairs nationally and internationally. From 2015-18, he was Curator of Satellite Art Show, an alternative art fair in Miami. He is the founder and Director of Tiger Strikes Asteroid, a non-profit network of artist-run spaces and Chief Curator at Trestle Gallery, a non- profit arts organization in Sunset Park, Brooklyn.

Magnolia Laurie | Again and Again

Magnolia’s  work explores ideas of landscape, vantage point, the human instinct to build, and our complex relationship to land. Absent of any actual people, the drawings and paintings depict gestures of the built environment as both literal evidence and metaphor for human impact.

The drawings in Again and Again embrace stratification and accumulation. Rocks stack in cairns and totems, becoming markers of a destination, human activity, or a point in time. They are made with a love for ink and paper and an exploration of how they relate to each other. They are an exercise of fearlessness, an attempt to make and accept each layer with grace.

Magnolia Laurie was born in Massachusetts and raised in Puerto Rico. She received her BA in Critical Social Thought from Mount Holyoke College and her MFA from the Mount Royal School of Art at the Maryland Institute College of Art. She has been awarded residencies from the Vermont Studio Center, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the Creative Alliance in Baltimore, and the Jentel Foundation in Wyoming. Magnolia’s work has been supported with grants from the Creative Baltimore Fund, the Maryland State Arts Council Grants, the Belle Foundation and a Mid Atlantic Creative Fellowship. Magnolia lives in Baltimore, MD and is an Assistant Professor at Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, PA.