Gloria Maximo, Client States, 2018. Wooden desk, mineral silicate paint on cast plaster panel, chairs, single-channel video with sound, 2 minutes. Courtesy of the artist.
Gloria Maximo, Client States, 2018. Wooden desk, mineral silicate paint on cast plaster panel, chairs, single-channel video with sound, 2 minutes. Courtesy of the artist.
Gloria Maximo, Client States, 2018. Wooden desk, mineral silicate paint on cast plaster panel, chairs, single-channel video with sound, 2 minutes. Courtesy of the artist.
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| Client States came out of a desperation and rage in response to the election of our current president and the multitude of brutal law enforcement-related deaths that are happening to Black people in this country. The passing of time without much significant institutional change begins to frame my own work and daily activity as a Black woman in the U.S.A. with what Lumi Tan has described as "performative respect for white authority" (Apricota Journal). On one day, my strength is used in a cycle of labor, and to excel at such feels like a source of accomplishment and pride. On another day, that same strength must be used instead to withstand the perverse requirements of maintaining a performance for survival. | ||||
| In Client States, I wanted to make a work about the shifting, and often ignored, interiority necessary to maintain hierarchical power relationships. I use references culled from my daily life, so I located the piece at a desk with three chairs: one behind, and two in front, off to the side. I am a substitute art teacher for the NYC Department of Education, as well as having worked for years as a secretary, so the desk and chairs came easily to me. This hierarchical relationship is also, of course, prevalent in our society. A plaster cast panel with a delicately painted undulating surface is the elephant in the room, lying in repose on the desk at the center of the two-sided relationship. The desk is ubiquitous: it’s where a presentation, an appeal, a discussion, an approval or rejection, a transfer of information, or a point of service all take place. The desk is also finished to look like a museum pedestal, and the chairs are borrowed from Queens Museum’s public events seating. The video was shot over a period of time in the empty director’s office at Queens Museum. | ||||
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| It might not be obvious that I am influenced by Realism, and often think about my work with that historical period in mind. In the video I am not pretending to be a character, or attempting to create a narrative. I am instead enacting a performance as myself, a painter, to create an abstraction that has a realist subject. Additionally, all of my work is rooted in real experiences that have happened to me personally or I have observed. I am not portraying a fiction. In this project I have identified a relationship or structure in my life that connects to others’ lives, and I am making art about the movement within these structures. This is sometimes gentle and ethereal, sometimes angry and violent, but always cycling in on repeat. I work in series, with slight variations as I go from piece to piece, and I think that is similar to how a lot of societal structures function. It seems as if each cycle is the same, but in fact there are often slight differences that can change a shape over time, and are formed by its repetition, as we move through the structure. |
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| In the video it appears as if I am just performing my duty as per usual at the close of the day, but my seated movement in an unoccupied chair, a small repeated gesture, suggests things unspoken but felt, brought out, not into the light of day, but the edge of night. It is a tiny misappropriation of the space and time—just having taken the seat and moved within it. | ||||
| prev | Gloria Maximo (b. 1978, Rockville Centre, NY) received a BA from Antioch College, Ohio (2000). Her work has been included in exhibitions at Metro Pictures Gallery (2018); Queens Museum (2017); Bridget Donahue Gallery, NY (2016); MOMA P.S.1, NY (2014); Palais de Tokyo, France (2012); and Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, OR (2010). Maximo was a finalist for the 2014 William H. Johnson Prize for painting. She is currently a fellow in the 2017/2018 Shandaken Paint School. She lives and works in Hollis, Queens. | next | ||
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