As it was, so it is

AS IT WAS, SO IT IS...
Serchia Gallery is pleased to present As It Was, So It Is..., an exhibition bringing together a collection of recent works by the acclaimed British Hungarian interdisciplinary artist Yulia Mahr, opening on 20 March and on view until 20 April.

 

Reflecting on the female experience and notions of impermanence, Mahr’s practice represents a profound act of engagement with form, materiality, and the natural world. She returns repeatedly to questions of representation and figuration, in a sophisticated enquiry into notions of nudity, hierarchy, and concepts of permanence and identity.
“My interest in the body, particularly the female body, comes from a place of complexity and depth. I approach it not as an object of beauty or softness, but as something that carries a rich, sometimes uncomfortable history, often linked to trauma, and survival,” Mahr explains.

Drawing inspiration from the Pictorialists and Photo-Successionists to invoke a dreamlike sensibility and poetic undertones, Mahr’s work captures a tender and vulnerable exploration of the intricacies of human existence.

As It Was, So It Is... spotlights three distinct bodies of work. In the series In You I see Me, Mahr rephotographs, enlarges, and manipulates the images of women hidden as anonymous background characters in archival photographs and, in an act echoing religious iconography, brings them into the foreground. The Blues, a ‘visceral act of self-portraiture’ examines the artist’s own post-partum body, while The Quiet Uncertainty of Stone sees Mahr investigate the inevitability of mutability and its triumph over notions of permanence. Interwoven amongst these works are Hands IV, which dissolves the boundaries between sculpture and natural elements to evoke inner psychological states; Asking, a tentative plea for connection; and the haunting Untitled, an enquiry into the ethics of the morally dubious practice of collecting embryos and stillborn infants for nineteenth century museum displays.

 

“Artists like Yulia are the reason we created SERCHIA. Yulia’s emphathetic and wholly sincere nature is imbued into everything she creates. She gives a voice to those who have been silenced and magnifies their wisdom in a way that draws us in wanting more and feeling closer to understanding,” Christine Serchia.