Equal Parts of Unequal
This week, Zavitz Gallery features “Equal Parts of Unequal,” an exhibition of sculptures and paintings by Maegan R. Mehler. It opened on Nov. 3, and runs until Nov. 7. I wandered through the gallery with Kush Patel, a first-year Biomedical Science major, talking about the work. This is a selection from our conversation:
Kush: I’m searching for these themes, and I feel like they are reoccurring.
Will: So the titular themes are “equality” and “inequality.” And maybe “parts.”
Kush: For some reason, I feel like this part that has been cut off is the same as this. Everything seems to fit together.
Will: It looks like it should fit together, but it doesn’t fit together. And there’s this pineapple up here. Any thoughts about the pineapple?
Kush: A dark pineapple. A black pineapple. It almost seems like this clear blue sky is trying to engulf this darkness, and keep it away and let us have a bright day. In order for nature to be balanced, there must be both a disastrous side and a calm side, and that keeps everything in balance, and it’s all about balance.
Will: So there’s something going on in this show with balance, then. Balance of colours, balance of shapes, balance of design.
Kush: This piece made me think of our Earth and our star, the sun. And now it stands out because the other sculptures are really irregularly shaped, while this one is a perfect semi-circle and a perfect circle.
Will: And then this portrait is totally out of sync as well. There’s nothing else that’s representational in that way.
Kush: I’m just trying to see anything that’s related to symmetry. Our faces and our bodies are symmetrical, of course, in terms of proportion. And it seems like the lighting is coming from this side, so this side of the face is brighter than that side, which might make it unequal in terms of the balance.
Will: The dark and the light.
Kush: Again, I’m thinking about the balance of the dark and bright sides of nature. When I look at these, they look like yoga mats—maybe they are. But this is more like a baby blue, it’s more calming. You’d love to see ocean water that colour when you go to an exotic beach. And then it gets darker, and then really dark navy blue, which almost seems like a stormy ocean.
