DeAnna Maganias

Getting to Saint Peter, 2006, still from video, 110×110 cm

The divergence between objective reality and the subjective experience of that reality defines the main terrain in which the work of DeAnna Maganias operates. Frequent subjects in her work are the standard environments of contemporary travel – airports and airplanes – and intimate domestic spaces – the tiled or plaster surfaces of bathroom or bedroom floors, walls or ceilings. By focusing on details of such places and representing them with painstaking accuracy she reveals how the familiar can become abstract. In formal terms such abstraction maintains a dialogue with the practices of minimal art. Yet her choice of subjects and her methods of representation propose a more complex perception of objective reality. The artist’s work mediates between the objective reality and subjective experience of what is represented, to reveal the viewer (and artist’s) separation from the surrounding material world he or she inhabits. This distance serves to highlight differences between the outer, measurable material world, and the ineffable nature of inner experience, which however, by being represented is in turn made objective.

In the work Getting to Saint Peter (2006) this complex dialogue is brought full circle. Composed of two plaster white egg-shaped volumes, each sculpture contains a video-loop pregnant with meaning. In the shorter of the two videos, viewed by looking through a pair of eye-holes in a mask indented into the surface of the sculpture, we see the inner surface of the dome of the Vatican basilica, Saint Peter’s. The view is taken through the ornate grating of the oculus of the crypt, directly beneath the dome, where Pope John Paul II is buried. The deceased Pope’s resting place has become a site of mass pilgrimage, consequently the motion of the camera, while remaining trained on the oculus and Michelangelo’s dome beyond, follows the course of the pilgrims processional route past the Pope’s tomb. As the images of this brief video progress, we see the rational form of the Renaissance dome dissolved and rebuilt in an endless cycle of construction and deconstruction. The second video records the real-time ascent and descent of the internal circular staircase, built within the structure of the Renaissance dome, conceived as a symbol of the universal reason underpinning the doctrine of the Roman Church. From the discomfort of the kneeling position required to watch this video, we follow the camera’s progress up stairs, through narrow, dimly-lit corridors and along expanses of tiled wall and floor surfaces. Respite from these claustrophobic internal spaces occasionally occurs as light from windows in the dome floods into our field of vision, however we never exit the dome before we begin our descent.

DeAnna Maganias lives and works between Athens, Greece and New York. She studied at the Rhode Island School of Design and the Cooper Union, New York. She has had solo exhibitions at the Rebecca Camhi Gallery, Athens (2001, 2007), Art Brussels: Project Space, with Rebecca Camhi, Brussels Belgium (2006); Paolo Bonzano Gallery, Rome (2006); Art Forum Berlin: Project Space with Paolo Bonzano Gallery, Berlin, Germany (2006); Thomas Erben Gallery, New York (2007). Since 1997 she has exhibited in numerous group shows, notably at the DESTE Foundation Athens (1999); Galerie Wohnmaschine, Berlin (2000); 8th International Istanbul Biennale, Istanbul, Turkey (2003); ARCO, Madrid, Spain (2004); European Space-Sculpture Quadrennial Riga 2004, Latvia (2004); Museo d’Arte Contemporanea di Roma (MACRO), Rome, Italy (2004); 2nd International Video Biennial, Tel Aviv, Israel (2004); Prague Biennial 2, Czech Republic (2005); State Museum of Contemporary Art, Thessaloniki, Greece (2006); Museum of Cycladic Art, Athens, Athens Greece (2007); National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens, Greece (2007, 2009); Foundation for the Arts in Contemporary Europe (FACE) – touring exhibition (2009-2011). Among many others the work of DeAnna Maganias is in the collections of the DESTE Foundation, Athens, Greece and the Museo d’Arte Contemporanea di Roma (MACRO), Rome, Italy. DeAnna Maganias is represented by the Rebecca Camhi Gallery, Athens, Greece.