Magnan Projects is pleased to present Cave_{flip side}new works by Maya Onoda. For her third solo show with Magnan Projects, Onoda continues to work with delicate papers and mixed media, creating installations and drawings. In this new body of work Onoda has moved away from her “topographical dairies”; becoming less personal and more visceral, although still intimate in nature, the coffee stained and watercolor paints on paper allow the images to be determined through unplanned shapes.

While working in her studio, Onoda began to notice that the discarded, unused cutout shapes left behind – the negative spaces – had a beauty unto themselves. She decided to hang them on the wall and they immediately became the main subject rather than blank spaces. The discarded pieces became “beautiful fossils that are literally the remains of a previous existence.” It is the flipside of previous works. The fossil shapes inspired her to create a triangular Cave_{flip side}, a cave-like installation (9×7 ft) where five panel drawings hang diagonally from the wall to the floor enticing the visitor to walk through and explore as if inside a cave.

The exhibition also includes drawings from the Fossil Series of small, colorful creatures that organically grew out of the earlier castaway forms. Onoda explains, “In this way they are no longer positives or negatives – just shapes. It all depends on how you look at it; which one is positive or negative.” Cave_{flip side} in itself reflects a microcosm of the universe. “Cave depicts nowhere in particular, but everywhere. It’s all repeating.”

Maya Onoda was born in Japan and received her BFA from California State University-Fullerton and an MFA from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York. She was awarded the 2006 MFA Grant Award from the Joan Mitchell Foundation. Most recently Onoda had a solo show at the Newhouse Center for Contemporary Art, Snug Harbor, Staten Island, NY and participated in group shows including The Fashion District Arts Festival, New York, NY and Garbage Picker, The Contemporary Artist as Chiffonier(e) curated by Amy Brandt. Maya Onoda currently lives in New York City.