Erica Mahinay

Selected Works

Biography

Born in 1986, Santa Fe, New Mexico, Erica Mahinay lives and works in Los Angeles. She received her MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art, Bloomfield Hills, US and her BFA from Kansas City Art Institute, Kansas City. With her attention on the senses, Erica Mahinay’s work prompts touch, conjuring visual encounters out of physical experience. Translucency, sheen, and porosity are some of the qualities that demonstrate how Mahinay engages the body’s inherent corporeal intellect. Contemporary neuroscience supports the notion that upon encountering visual art, the intertwining of the senses leads to more expansive bodily sensations. Smooth, permeable, wet, dry, sticky, powdery, seeping and transforming surfaces entwine with one another in compositions that are at times abstract, at times suggestive of subtle figuration on the cusp of legibility. In these borderlands, touch serves as the implicit compass for navigating our human experience in which the sensual is inseparable from the perceptual and conceptual. The artistic practice of Mahinay celebrates the experience of being human — of being a body in space and extending conscious experience through time — by means of her investigation with image, surface, and materiality. Her embrace of imperfection and vulnerability invites the viewer to engage in a compelling ritual of enticement and seduction while she augments and deconstructs the basic mechanics of a painting: its surface and support. Surfaces are folded, puckered and inverted, pressed against support. Mahinay’s work continues the history of artists using their own bodies in acts of rebellion, protest, and celebration to actualize and liberate the self. Her improvised movements, evidenced by the trace, demonstrate a conscious pursuit of an embodied image, a groping and slipping for self-reinvention, and for connection. Resulting irregularities and trace compose a topography of kinesthetic and rhythmic intelligence that evidences intimacy and arrive at a place that is both fragile and fierce.

Gallery Exhibitions

Other Venues

Selected Press

18.07.2022
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Etichette d'artista, per vestire bottiglie da collezione
01.11.2014
ARTRIBUNE
Il ritorno al quotidiano. Erica Mahinay e la materia narrante

CV

Education

2013

MFA, Cranbrook Academy of Art, Bloomfield Hills, United States

2008

BFA, Kansas City Art Institute, Kansas City, United States

2007

Italy Study Abroad Program, KCAI/Santa Reparata International School of Art, Florence

Selected solo exhibitions

2023

“Moving From and For” T293, Rome

2022

‘Surfaces’, F&deO, Madrid

2021

‘The Bright Place Idea’, Lyles & King, New York

2019

‘Let the Breath Breathe Itself’, Lyles & King, New York
‘Sun Seekers’, HGA Architecture / Euclid, Los Angeles
‘Contingent’, T293, Rome

2017

‘Visions From the Personal Growth Laboratory’, Lyles & King, New York

2016

‘Softly, Boldly’, Ibid Gallery, Los Angeles

2015

‘Thin Skins, Infinity Pools and Sand Slumps’, Fused Space/Jessica Silverman, San Francisco

2014

‘At the Tip of the Tongue’, Loudhailer, Los Angeles, United States
‘Sunbathing in the Shadow of the Volcano’, T293, Naples

Selected group exhibitions

2024

SIGNAL TO NOISE, Diane Rosenstein Gallery, L.A., (forthcoming)

2023

‘Made in L.A. 2023: Acts of Living’, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles

2022

‘LA Dreams 3 Light Touch’, CFHILL, Stockholm
‘Electric Affinities’, T293 Rome

2021

Zidoun Bossuyt Gallery, Luxembourg
Lyles & King, New York, United States
‘Surfaces’, Nino Mier

2020

‘Imperfect Clocks’, CHART, New York
‘End Demo’, Epoch, an artist-run virtual experiment (online)

2019

‘Touch Knows You Before Language’, Lyles & King, New York
‘The Shape of Content’, OCHI Projects, Los Angeles

2018

‘Metamorphosis, Lightly (Intimacy of Form)’, Oof Books, Los Angeles
‘Dead Eden’, Lyles & King, New York

2016

‘Boys and Girls Can Still Draw’, Nathalie Karg Gallery, New York
‘Roman A Clef And/Or The Appetite Of The Chef (Part 2)’, curated by Mateo Tannatt, Rainbow in Spanish, Los Angeles
‘Miranda’, Anat Ebgi, Los Angeles
‘On my volcano grows the Grass’, Artist Curated Projects, Los Angeles
‘Together / Alone’, EMBASSY, Los Angeles

2015

MEAT RAFFLE: Timo Fahler, Erica Mahinay, Kyle Patrick Roberts, Mary Weatherford, BBQ LA, Los Angeles
Saline Communion / Erica Mahinay & Kathryn O’Halloran, Harmony Murphy Gallery, Los Angeles

2014

‘THE GO BETWEEN. A selection of emerging international artists from the Ernesto Esposito Collection’, Museo Nazionale di Capodimonte, Naples, Italy
‘DTW>>>LAX: Introductions’, CB1 Gallery, Los Angeles

2013

‘First Annual Art Book Fair’, Plug Projects, Kansas City

2012

‘Kansas City Flatfile’, Biennial Invitational Exhibition, H&R Block Artspace, Kansas City
‘Stereotype’, Detroit Opera House, Detroit
‘XOXO Salon Show’, S.B.G Gallery, Kansas City

2011

‘Re-Describe’, Cocoon Gallery, Kansas City
‘Artist in Residence Exhibition’, Pembroke Hill High School, Kansas City
‘Converging Currents’, Forum Gallery + Butter Projects, Bloomfield Hills
‘Failure’, Forum Gallery, Bloomfield Hills

2010

‘Bread & Butter: a Pop-up Shop’, Spool, Kansas City
‘mis-place – re-trace’, Stairway Art Space, Kansas City
‘Kansas City Flatfile’, Biennial Invitational Exhibition, H&R Block Artspace, Kansas City
‘CUMULUS: An Urban Culture Project Residency Focus Exhibition’, Paragraph Gallery, Kansas City

2008

‘Objects for the Space in Between/Space for the Objects in Between’, Syringe Gallery, Kansas City

2007

‘Inscapes and Adaptations’, Crossroads Gallery, Kansas City