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Black & White Gallery / Project Space, Brooklyn, NY
presents new work by Dennis Maher in a solo exhibition consisting of the
site-specific installation created during his artist-in-residency at the Black
& White Project Space in the summer of 2010 and a series of constructed
photographic images created in response to the installation.
END WALL / project space
Maher has transformed the rear
outdoor project space into one of his amalgams of urban refuse revealing the
anatomy of all sorts of demolitions: both fictional and real. This is an
investigation of the afterlives of the neglected and the discarded, disclosing
lost and found itineraries, heaped and piled trajectories, aggregate structural
possibilities, and systems of organized disuse. Collected debris becomes
the site for an archaeology of the post-consumed, and the foundations of wasted
architectures, salvaged and restored.
NEGLECT OF
FINISH / gallery
Recent photographic works
create a connection linking the interior of the gallery to the outdoor project
space. Maher focuses his lens on separate bizarre yet mesmerizing details of the
installation. This is an exploration of unexpected connections between stored
and recycled, stacking and progressing in scale, position, and tone –
assemblages of planks, chairs, tables and boxes reveal cycles of incorporation
and adaptation to the changing status of the commodity and point at a horizon
beyond this endless repetition.
Dennis Maher has been exploring critical approaches to demolition, renovation,
and restoration since 2003. His work has involved the harvesting of discarded
building materials from sites of demolition, and the construction of aggregate
environments of urban waste. Upon completing architecture studies at Cornell
University, Maher pursued independent projects in Barcelona, Spain and
Pátzcuaro, Mexico before embarking upon the post-industrial frontier of
Buffalo, NY in 2002. While earning a living in the construction and demolition
industries, he began assembling material within spaces undergoing renovation,
presenting his work in a variety of the city’s forlorn structures. In
addition to receiving the Black & White Project Space Prize for 2010, Maher
is the recipient of a MacDowell Colony Fellowship for 2008 and a NYSCA
Independent Projects Grant for 2010. He has taught in the Department of
Architecture at SUNY, University at Buffalo since 2004. His work has been
featured in Architect Magazine, on the national radio program Smart
City Radio, and on PBS television’s Going Green series.
Published writings by Maher include Towards Un-building, in 306090
Sustain and Develop, and The Nightworks in Unplanned, Research
and Experiments at the Urban Scale.
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