Baker—Hall and Mahara+Co are pleased to present Holding Form, a collaborative group exhibition opening Saturday, February 28, from 5—8pm. The exhibition brings together artists from both gallery programs and marks the beginning of a new chapter as the two galleries share a single space while maintaining distinct curatorial voices.
Holding Form convenes six artists whose practices consider how form is constructed, contained, activated, and sustained. Across painting, sculpture, and mixed media, the works move between formal restraint and embodied expression, examining how structure and experience shape one another.
Rather than positioning these approaches in contrast, the exhibition proposes a productive dialogue. Some works emerge from systems, repetition, and material discipline; others unfold through gesture, narrative, and lived presence. Together, they create a space where form becomes both boundary and threshold.
The practices of Mahara+Co artists Lucas Estévez, Elvira Smeke, and Sebastián Baudrand are grounded in formal systems and material inquiry. Through repetition, accumulation, and measured gesture, their works emphasize process and duration. Form becomes a method of thinking — an architecture shaped by erosion, restraint, and close attention.
In dialogue, Baker—Hall artists Jen Clay, Debbi Kenote, and Melissa Wallen approach form through memory, and personal mythology. Clay’s immersive, psychological language challenges perception and invites interior reflection. Kenote’s materially attuned works use repetition and mark-making as quiet acts of insistence. Wallen’s layered compositions suspend image and gesture, allowing color and structure to carry emotional weight. Across their practices, form remains fluid — shaped by lived experience and intuition rather than fixed systems.
Holding Form ultimately considers form as an evolving condition — an unstable balance between structure and subjectivity, material logic and emotional charge.
