Exhibition - I Make My Own Weather by Bonny Leibowitz

The MAC is pleased to announce I Make My Own Weather – an exhibition of work by Bonny Leibowitz and a video installation by Gabriela Morawetz.

Leibowitz’s work utilizes and expounds upon the landscape painting traditions of idealized histories, such as the Hudson River School, Romanticism and the Baroque. The installations act as deconstructed paintings, as though walking through fragments of represented landscapes. In these worlds, synthetic materials masquerade as natural, and the natural as synthetic; a tree root painted epoxy green, an Astro turf tarp in the shape of a pond, a peeling away of a blue sky. Painted and photographic images hang, float, or drape on the floor. 3D objects; a cascading wave, a chunk of earth, jut from the wall. The material confusions in the work reveal the facade of the image; the conventional idea of humans as outside the natural world, and nature as pristine and untouched. Such ideologies are collapsed by the realities of the climate crisis.

These installations indulge the beauty of the depicted landscape, side by side with its own shattered mythology. If a painting is a complete world, this work both embodies that world and points to its falseness.

Gabriela Morawetz's Healing shows the opposition and interconnectedness of the metaphysical and the real, is evident. From that perspective certain experiences and images will take the shape of the real yet we are exploring the mysteries. They interact in a circular way in constant metamorphosis and connect the sphere of unconsciousness with nature. That process is active in both ways. Seeking for equilibrium seems paradoxical yet it is a process of healing.

"The water seeker is anchored in the brown of the earth, in a setting that reflects the Universe. He holds in his hands two hazel branches pointing to the sky. In the thrill of an early gray morning, he goes in search of a source that hides and flees the world. The water, the earth and heaven as only witnesses. Eyes and ears inside the body, faceless, he begins wandering, getting in tune with the underground forces. The one who is near the forces of nature participates in its secrets." - Josette Rasle

About Bonny Leibowitz

Originally from Philadelphia, Leibowitz lives in Dallas, TX where she maintains her studio practice. Leibowitz produces objects, installations and paintings utilizing a multitude of materials in ways that often disguise their origin, blurring the boundaries between the manufactured and the natural.  

Her solo exhibitions include The MAC, Dallas, TX, The Art Gallery at Collin College, Plano, TX, Terrain Dallas, The Baugh Center for the Visual Arts at UMHB, Belton TX, No.4 Studio in Brooklyn, NY, The Neon Heater in Findlay, OH, Liliana Bloch Gallery in Dallas, TX, Art Cube Gallery in Laguna Beach, CA, The Museum of Art, MSU in Wichita Falls, TX and Cohn Drennan Contemporary in Dallas, TX. 

About Gabriela Morawetz

Gabriela Morawetz was born in Poland and graduated from the Academy of Fine Art in Krakow. From 1975 to 1983, Gabriela Morawetz resided in Caracas, Venezuela, where she got a scholarship from the National Council of Culture. She then represented Venezuela and Poland in numerous international exhibitions of prints and drawings. She currently lives in Paris, France.

Her work was included in several exhibitions in the museums or cultural institutions: Museo de Arte Contemporeaneo MACSI in Caracas / solo show / Foundation Canal in Madrid, Museum of Japanese Art &Technology in Cracow/ solo show, Zacheta in Warsaw, Chicago Cultural Center, Loyola University of Art (LUMA) in Chicago, San Antonio Museum of Art in California, Yerba Buena ArtCenter in San Francisco, Rubin New York Museum of Art, Biwako Biennial in Ohmi Hachi Man, Japan.

The exhibition will be on view May 6th — June 17th, 2023, at the gallery’s main location, 1503 S. Ervay Street.