DeAnna Maganias at Rebecca M. Camhi - Athens - Brief Article

DeAnna Maganias's first solo show, "Vaguely Familiar Places," consisted of a series of constructions depicting everyday environments whose familiarity is offset by the works' reduced size. Although the show comprised only six pieces, space was allocated generously, with most pieces occupying a room of their own. In the corner of one gallery stood a model of a grassy hill with a swimming pool at the top. The water at first seemed calm and undisturbed, until one observed the rise of intermittent bubbles that suggested the path of an invisible swimmer. Allusions to human presence ran throughout the exhibition. In a dimly lit room Elusive Object of My Fear (2001), a smaller-than-life-size elevator made from cardboard and paper, was suspended on the wall, its scale and flimsy materials eliciting a dread of entering an unsafe cab.

Shown on a monitor at knee-height, a video of a tomblike subterranean structure, partially filled with ebbing and flowing water, also exuded anxiety, a pervasive theme in the show. There is clearly no escape for any would-be occupant, just as none appears in July 2000, a model of a single floor from a multi-story office building. Lights inside the piece give the appearance that the space is on fire, evoking a sense of entrapment accentuated by the work's inaccessible placement high on a wall.

Strongly influenced by architecture, Maganias explores a disconcerting and alienating urban reality. Her earlier work examined feelings of estrangement through Magrittelike juxtapositions of scale in household interiors--a bar of soap looming large in a doll-house-size room, for example. Although she has recently shifted away from the limitation of the domestic world, voyeurism remains ever-present. In a work titled Then it will be as if I were already in the air (1999-2001), the viewer sees from above a carpeted, sky-blue room containing a small-scale model of an airport waiting area. Observing this transitory space devoid of travelers, one is again induced--as so often in Maganias's work--to experience anticipation, fear and helplessness.

COPYRIGHT 2002 Brant Publications, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2002 Gale Group