EMILY WEINER
PASSAGES

KÖNIG MEXICO CITY
6 SEPTEMBER – 3 OCTOBER 2024

KÖNIG MEXICO CITY is pleased to present PASSAGES, a solo exhibition by Emily Weiner, her first in Mexico City. The show is comprised of 11 new paintings that draw on the formal vocabulary of historical abstraction as well as geometry and science. Each work in PASSAGES explores the multidimensional, and often theatrical, nature of perception, highlighted by their custom frames, made from ceramic or wood.

Weiner’s paintings picture surreal landscapes that suggest alternate realities lurking behind conventional perspectives. Building on her interest in archetypal symbolism, the works in PASSAGES portray both primordial and universal symbols such as faces, moons, celestial bodies, and spirals. Weiner’s stated aim is to find a pictorial language that aligns these familiar forms in such a way as to incite a sense of reverie in the face of the ordinary. In LUMINARIES (all works 2024), three celestial bodies stack up to suggest a deeper order of the cosmos—one in which nature has been pictured as a hall of mirrors. In DOUBLE SLIT (the title is a reference to the famous physics experiment proving the duality of matter), a dusky blue sky is punctured to reveal a starry universe beyond. In CLOUDS, a series of faces in profile repeat to form a nebulous atmosphere full of figure-ground illusions, while in CONVERGENCE two spirals collide in the sky, seemingly conducted by the disembodied hands of a magician behind a curtain.

Emily Weiner, CONVERGENCE, 2024 

Each work is multilayered, with paradoxical configurations and open-ended questions that nod to “the treachery of images,” as René Magritte famously described it. Like framed mirrors, the paintings in PASSAGES urge viewers to examine images more closely, and in so doing, perhaps catch a glimpse of one’s own way of seeing, reflected back.