The term “distillation” refers to “the extraction of the essential meaning or most important aspects of something” as well as to “the process of purifying a liquid, by heating and cooling it.” Both a linguistic endeavour and a physical process, distillation is the cornerstone of Garber Maikovska’s practice.

By internalising the tension between natural and constructed landscapes, Garber Maikovska distills his awareness of openness, and the sense of opportunity that arises from the liminal spaces between the natural and artificial landscapes, first into an intuitive, somatic set of gestures, which like intimate coded ceremonies translate and synthesise his experience of passing through these landscapes, their frequencies and energy.

Practicing these gestural ceremonies daily - which he prefers referring to as his “somatic practice” rather than as dance - which would otherwise imply a higher, coded, theatrical key - Garber Maikovska performs in a state of graceful interaction between his body and mind. Verging on the subconscious, his somatic practice is then captured, translated and distilled once again thanks to paint, which remains as a material witness to these suspended moments of graceful awareness.

The works presented in Lost Corner Lot Play are distillations of the artist’s particular experience of meandering through the breathtaking natural landscapes of Southern California - where Garber Maikovska lives, and his awareness of their existence on the verge of constructed, structured urban landscapes: Pollock Pines, Humboldt Toiyobe as well as Fremont Pass in Colorado, Washoe valley, Nevada or again Hermit Ridge, Arizona. These vast, untouched planes, glorious mountains covered in pure white snow, aglow under the bright blue sky are the beating heart that mark the rhythm of Garber Maikovka’s compositions in the exhibition.

Guided by his awareness of his body moving through these natural landscapes and geographies like a “flaneur” on a stroll, his paintings harness a transformative power, inviting the viewer into his “psychogeographies” – which are translations of the sensations generated by his temporary experience of these infinite natural landscapes.

Highly concerned with the interaction between paint and surface, Maikovska uses oil bars that he crafts himself in his studio, applied directly and intuitively onto lightweight fluted poly boards. On the occasion of Lost Corner Lot Play Garber Maikovska also unveils new works on canvas, a surface material he had not used since the 1990’s.

Brimming with the energy of pure pigment, Garber Maikovska thus pushes each composition through his body, translating his movements onto the surface to reveal the dissonances, contrasts and harmonies of interactions between colors - their frequencies and densities. Garber Marikovska not only applies paint, he also removes and “excavates” it from the surface.

Garber Maikovska’s gesamtkunstwerk gives materiality to his awareness of the poetic collision between finite and infinite – of fate, spirituality and ideas, in collision with the hard, physical reality of spaces, to soften its edges, and allow them coexist in his suspended, sensory compositions.