OVERLOAD, solo show by Maggi Hodge MASH Gallery
March 20 – April 24, 2021
In her current series of work, the always bold, expressionist painter, Maggi Hodge grapples with our current state of living in inundation: our modern lives are overloaded with physical and psychological detritus that threatens to overwhelm and overburden us with unnecessary chatter and matter. With her generous employment of color and a primitivist aesthetic, Hodge’s remedy is to create within her canvases both elements of frenetic movement of emotion intertwined with moments of release and calm. Hodge’s message is that we not only can find our own way to calm—but to fight for its necessity. Hodges’ artistic composition, use of symbolism and flipping of the positive and negative space in her work depict an overflow of feeling, thought and reaction to existential forces beyond our control. The array of hues, recurring shapes and tonal shifts in her work suggest chaos at play, but Hodge always has a larger purpose in mind. Hodge’s work aims to transcend and liberate us from being subsumed in a deluge of our own making. Her work has always been suggestive rather than prescriptive. Hodge calls attention to the created boundaries of our daily existence: technological engulfment, stubborn patriarchy, media bombardment, and the hum of constant underlying social stress so that we can transcend all the cacophony to a much-needed state of nourishing calm. Hodge, a practitioner of meditation, encourages us to find serene shores of solace that are within our grasp.
www.mashgallery.com