Kavi Gupta Gallery
Skip to main content
  • Menu
  • Artists
  • Exhibitions
  • News
  • Viewing Room
  • Editions
  • Events & Art Fairs
  • Public Works
  • Podcast
  • Information
  • Mission
Menu

Michi Meko: While I’m Here…A Different South: San Antonio, TX.

Past exhibition
13 July - 10 September 2023
  • Overview
  • Installation Views
Overview
Images courtesy of Artpace San Antonio, photography by Beth Devillier.
Images courtesy of Artpace San Antonio, photography by Beth Devillier.

Michi Meko’s exhibition at Artpace, While I’m Here…A Different South delves into the artist’s journey from Georgia to Texas and his search for the transcendent moment. Through painting, sculpture, and sound, Meko creates a pathway for the viewer through his anxiety toward a tranquil horizon.

 

Upon entering, the viewer is drawn toward a black acrylic dome that occupies the center of the gallery. It has a charged, monolithic quality and is lit from the interior by red and blue LED lights, which can be seen through crevices laser etched onto the surface. The contrasting colors oscillate back and forth along the surface, like a conversation. The viewer’s eye is pulled across the dome by the sporadic path of the lights. The experience evokes a sense of anxiety and confusion and, at times, arrives in peaceful suspension, akin to the unfolding of a panic attack. We are left wondering if this is the soul of Meko, a supernatural self-portrait on display for the viewer to interpret and engage.

 

Two large landscape paintings hang on the north and west walls, which depict Meko’s version of the Texas Hill Country. Each environment is blighted and dangerous, consisting of bleached bones, brooding clouds, and plants that cause pain. It is rendered as tainted with a veil of fog-like aberrations. Here, the viewer journeys through a foreboding, molecular landscape, but we are guided beyond it into a peaceful light source of beautiful blue and gold hues. These visual pathways embody the artist’s profound reflections on ethereal phenomena, methods of ritual protection, and their potential to guide us unscathed through a treacherous landscape.

 

On the south wall, there are five dark gesso canvases that, upon close inspection, are just off the black mark. The color is slightly watered down, a minimal gesture that gives the work faint depth. The viewer is compelled to look closely at each painting’s surface to find the brushstrokes and the subtle aberrations. Always in search of a transcendent experience that is just out of reach, the artist creates that peaceful moment for himself here. Like a psychological test, Meko asks the viewer, what do you see?

 

Throughout the exhibit, there is a clear undercurrent of tender resolve by the artist to parse through the darkness of anxiety and depression into the cosmic clarity that often follows. While I’m Here…A Different South, Meko’s search for the transformative moment continues.

 

  • Art Pace Museum of San Antonio
Share
  • Facebook
  • X
  • Pinterest
  • Tumblr
  • Email
Installation Views
  • Images courtesy of Artpace San Antonio, photography by Beth Devillier.
    Images courtesy of Artpace San Antonio, photography by Beth Devillier. 
  • Michimeko Whileimhereadifferentsouth10
  • Michimeko Whileimhereadifferentsouth3
  • Michimeko Whileimhereadifferentsouth9
  • Michimeko Whileimhereadifferentsouth1
  • Michimeko Whileimhereadifferentsouth8
  • Michimeko Whileimhereadifferentsouth11
  • Michimeko Whileimhereadifferentsouth4
  • Michimeko Whileimhereadifferentsouth5
  • Michimeko Whileimhereadifferentsouth6
  • Michimeko Whileimhereadifferentsouth7

Related artist

  • Michi Meko

    Michi Meko

Back to exhibitions

Contact: +1  708-480-2882

General Inquiries: info@kavigupta.com

Media Inquiries: media@kavigupta.com

Client & Sales Inquiries: client@kavigupta.com

Publications: Kavi Gupta Editions

Facebook Twitter Instagram Newsletter

Kavi Gupta Washington Blvd

835 W. Washington Blvd. Chicago, IL 60607

Hours | Tue–Fri: 11 am–6 pm, Sat: 12 pm–5 pm

Kavi Gupta Elizabeth St

219 N. Elizabeth St. Chicago, IL 60607 
Hours | By appointment only

 

 

Kavi Gupta Warehouse

2108 S. California Ave. Chicago, IL 60608

Kavi Gupta New Buffalo

215 E. Buffalo St. #219 New Buffalo, MI 49117

Instagram, opens in a new tab.
Artsy, opens in a new tab.
Join the mailing list
View on Google Maps
Ocula, opens in a new tab.
Manage cookies
2025 Kavi Gupta
Site by Artlogic

This website uses cookies
This site uses cookies to help make it more useful to you. Please contact us to find out more about our Cookie Policy.

Manage cookies
Accept

Cookie preferences

Check the boxes for the cookie categories you allow our site to use

Cookie options
Required for the website to function and cannot be disabled.
Improve your experience on the website by storing choices you make about how it should function.
Allow us to collect anonymous usage data in order to improve the experience on our website.
Allow us to identify our visitors so that we can offer personalised, targeted marketing.
Save preferences