As I Say Dying at AWHRHWAR, Los Angeles
February 15 - March 10, 2018
Review by Georgia Lassner
As I Say Dying emerges from Mayer’s consideration of archaeologic practices of collection and circulation. Intrigued by the academic who hoards “finds” indefinitely in above-ground storage, Mayer’s sculptural practice exists in the shadow cast by these excesses, while still driven by her embodied experience of every day strife. The central works of the AWHRHWAR exhibition are two sets of replicas of funerary urns that Mayer made in 2017 for family members. She remakes the urns at different scales, each set honoring decisions made in intense grief. The vessels’ variations reflect that they’ve been hand-crafted at different times and through the fog of consciousness.
Joining the replicas in the gallery are hooked rugs from Mayer’s Pale Clay series, made using knitting patterns generated by Mayer’s mother. Their imagery is pulled from various works by Paul Klee, her mother’s favorite painter. Additionally, the inclusion of a networked text + ceramic sculpture (Utteruent -1, 2018) provides an example of how language functions to excavate and bury, and can, at times, allow us to rise, raise, raze, and realize. Produced by compression and then fire, the branched, extruded channels in turn shape what passes through them. Language takes that same shape forming the walls themselves. Words sink up.
