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The View From Bed

February 15, 2007- March 17, 2007

Reception: February 15, 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm

DeAnna Maganias

Thomas Erben Gallery

526 W 26th St

DeAnna Maganias, who lives and works in Athens, Greece, and New York, presents a collection of sculpture, painting and video in her first U.S. solo exhibition, "The View From Bed". Strongly influenced by architecture and high modernist form, Maganias explores urban reality through a voyeuristic filter that cohesively exposes the personal elements which minimalism had previously suppressed. Reductionist tendencies towards the objective are complicated by her work's admission of the inherently subjective nature of consciousness.

In this exhibition's namesake piece, "The View From Bed" (the title having been derived from "The View From Nowhere" by Thomas Nagel), Maganias constructed a pared-down, inverted scale model of her studio's bedroom, complete with four walls, ceiling and floor. The access point for the viewer into this uninhabited, monastic dwelling is the volume of the bed, which has been isolated and removed. While the simplicity and self-evident nature of this boxed-in, architectural environment might normally provide the viewer with a removed experience; placing the vantage point at the artist's abdicated position pushes us into a unique stance wherein an objective viewing experience is directed to a foreign, subjective position.

"Sutton Place South : Master Bath, Guest-bath and Trash-room" are three separate acrylic on canvas works with stretchers shaped to the exact dimensions of the rooms they are named for. The white and gray paint has been repetitively applied and sanded to build an obsessive imitation in which control leads to seductive perfection. We are confronted with fetishized works that point out the degree to which we have internalized our physical relationship to the space around us.

The impressionist hope of capturing the transient, the momentary and contemporary life is materialized and extended in "The Citicorp Building, Sunset". This twenty-three minute film, shot in real time, is of a modernist styled, steel-framed, commercial office tower as it reflects a warmly colored setting sun and the waters of the East River. The inherent nature of consciousness rarely affords the opportunity, or capability, to be fully aware of itself, however, in Magania's work, we are able to consider it in a focused and varied manner.

DeAnna Maganias (b. 1967) studied at both Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) and Cooper Union. She has shown with Rebecca Camhi, Athens; MACRO, Rome; MARTa Herford, Germany; in the Prague Biennale 2005, and the Istanbul Biennial 2003, amongst others.

Books and DVDs related to artists in this show

Location map  Gallery Thomas Erben Gallery Address 526 W 26th St, 4th Fl New York (Chelsea) NY, 10001 United States Phone 212-645-8701 Fax 212-645-9630 Hours Tue-Sat 10-6 Nearby: All 27 galleries at 526 W 26th St

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