Erica Mao | Wading Through Time
April 28 - May 30, 2026
Public reception: Friday, May 1 from 6 - 8pm
Chozick Family Art Gallery is pleased to present Wading Through Time, New York–based artist Erica Mao’s first solo exhibition with the gallery. Featuring a series of new paintings and ceramic sculptures, the exhibition highlights Mao’s distinctive ability to merge abstraction, figuration, and landscape across media, creating complex, otherworldly, and dreamlike environments.
Mao is known for her lush, vibrant palette and densely layered compositions, which depict ethereal landscapes populated by ghostly humanoid figures she refers to as her “protagonists.” In this new body of work, she shifts toward primarily monochromatic environments—fields of vivid red, deep blue, sea green, and bright yellow—within which these figures appear to be in motion, navigating treacherous and frenetic terrains. The protagonists themselves have become increasingly ambiguous, often dissolving into or merging with their surroundings, as if they are inseparable from the landscapes they inhabit.
These works are notably more gestural and atmospheric, reflecting a deeper engagement with time, memory, and transformation. Mao poses an open-ended question: what does a life cycle look like within this imagined world? Subtle shifts in temperature, light, gravity, and temporality shape these environments, suggesting a world in constant flux. The artist further complicates the picture plane by incorporating layers of muslin into portions of the canvas, working across varied weaves to introduce texture and depth. This process disrupts the surface, creating a heightened sense of spatial complexity and material presence.
Mao’s paintings share a lineage with artists such as German Romantic landscape painter Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840) and Swedish painter Ferdinand Hodler (1953-1918). Like Friedrich, Mao evokes a sense of the sublime, situating figures within vast, often turbulent landscapes that gesture toward themes of mortality, transcendence, and the overwhelming force of nature. From Hodler, her work echoes an interest in rhythm, repetition, and the symbolic potential of form, where compositional structure carries emotional and psychological weight.
These formal and thematic concerns extend into Mao’s ceramic practice, which forms a central component of the exhibition. Presented as a multi-level installation, the sculptures collectively evoke a ghost town composed of shack-like structures. Richly textured and treated with varied glazes, these works translate Mao’s painted world into tactile, three-dimensional forms, with traces of her painted protagonists appearing as echoes across the surfaces of each roofless structure. What began as a series of small, rudimentary forms has evolved into a broader exploration of shelter, home, and habitation.
Wading Through Time ultimately reflects a pivotal moment in Mao’s artistic development. The exhibition foregrounds her evolving relationship to material and subject matter, using the metaphor of “wading” to suggest a slow, deliberate movement through experience, memory, and personal history. In contrast to her earlier work, which often operated through larger, more
abstract frameworks, these pieces feel deeply personal—rooted in a visceral engagement with emotion, survival, and the search for connection.
Across painting and sculpture, Mao’s work speaks to enduring questions of time, space, and humanity. Themes of intimacy, camaraderie, and the need for shelter—both physical and emotional—emerge throughout the exhibition. The protagonists, once enigmatic, now appear as conduits for lived experience, embodying a raw immediacy that is at once vulnerable and resilient.
Text by Anna Stothart
For more information and to set up an appointment, please contact rebekah@chozickfamilyartgallery.com
