The Berth (Ballast Nº2), Solo Exhibition by Anja Marais
30th September – 20th November
Artist’s reception: Wednesday, September 30 from 4 – 6 pm
Guggenheim Hall / Mariani Gallery
1819 8th ave, Greeley, Colorado

The Mariani Gallery is proud to present the solo exhibition of multidisciplinary contemporary South African artist Anja Marais entitled “The Berth (Ballast Nº2 )” at the School of Art and Design, University of Northern Colorado, Greeley, Colorado.

Anja Marais will take over the Mariani Gallery with her installation “The Berth (Ballast Nº2)” The installation will create an environment that questions the experience of change, stagnation, and our ability to embrace surrender. Anja’s work builds an intricate visual poem into the space that brings forth a feeling of contemplation and longing.

The elements of this installation can be broken down into moving images, sculpture work, and photographic mixed media. The moving image work is a sepia stop animation created and filmed in St. Petersburg Russia and follows a female that through acceptance of her burden, surrenders herself over to nature.

Through the sheer projection of the stop animation you will be aware of a sculpture in the space, a women that is caught mid state between flight and stagnation, her head a ship ready to sail but her body anchored by rocks.

On the walls of the gallery we have photographic mixed media that is transformed still images of the stop animation work. We are given an intimate look at our female that moves through states of fluidity (water) and stagnation (stone). Among these wall works is an installation of found antique oval frames encasing broken down fragments of the texture of water.

Water as subject has been a frequently recurring theme in Anja Marais’ work, functioning as an object of philosophical inquiry, a proxy towards reflection.

Considering herself a storyteller, Anja Marais’ work goes beyond the linear prediction of events by delving into her own consciousness to bring about a new perspective on subjectivity and our relationship to how the rest of the world experience itself. As the viewer moves through the installation, the boundaries of the dream world and reality dissolves with the interplay of moving image, painted surfaces, and sculptural object.

The imagery of stone and water in “The Berth (Ballast Nº2)”, creates a dense web of visual, literary and philosophical relationships which investigate issues of change, surrender and acceptance through the space of multidisciplinary installation. The exhibition will close on November 20th.

Anja Marais’ work is included in the permanent collections of the Miami Museum of Contemporary Art, The Washi Museum in Japan, the Kronstadt History museum of St Petersburg Russia among others. She currently works from her studio in Miami, Florida.