OCHI is pleased to present Foreplay, a solo exhibition of new work by artist Mia Weiner, on view in Los Angeles, CA from October 29 through December 17, 2022. This is Weiner’s first solo exhibition with the Gallery. An Artist’s Reception will be held on Saturday, October 29^th from 5:00 to 8:00 pm PST.

Mia Weiner weaves tapestries that depict intimate and raw imagery as she reflects upon personal relationships, somatic memories, psychologically charged spaces, and the subtle energy of the body. Weiner begins with feelings—the feeling of knee crossed over a leg, of a sigh or a deep breath, of what it feels like to float in water. Visuals that emerge from these meditative exercises are reenacted in photography sessions with the artist’s own body or with models. Weiner choreographs figures against backdrops of non-descript interiors, gently overlapping and interlacing limbs like living sculpture. Back in the studio, Weiner manipulates these digital images—collaging, deleting, and adjusting pixels as needed before converting completed compositions into an intricate map of gridded structures and tones. Files are fed into a digitally assisted loom, and line by line Weiner begins to manually weave each image. Unlike with textile mill fabrication, Weiner retains her ability to make decisions throughout the weaving process, changing color or yarn, manipulating the tension to foster abstraction, or inserting odd materials as intuition sees fit. Weiner lets long threads emerge from the edges of a woven image, haptically skimming the floor or tangled like emotions.

“Cloth is a place of shared experience. We interact with cloth every day,” notes Weiner. Mostly monochromatic, Weiner sometimes chooses to shift color unexpectedly or include the visual markers of production or glitch. Darker colors create a more contrasted or photographic image, while brighter hues can disrupt legibility of an image. Both color and anonymity—Weiner frequently hides the faces and heads of her figures—allow us to enter a conceptual space instead of searching for a narrative. Foreplay posits the body as a collective whole—expressing joy, making love, resting, sheltering, holding, and healing.

Mia Weiner received her MFA in Fiber and Material Studies from the School of the Art Institute in Chicago and her BFA in Fiber from the Maryland Institute College of Art. Weiner’s work has been exhibited nationally and internationally at venues including The Suburban in Milwaukee, WI; Masur Museum of Art in Monroe, LA; James Center for the Arts in Woodstock, NY; Arc Gallery and LVL3 in Chicago, IL; CULT Bureau in Oakland, CA; Museum of Contemporary Art in North Miami, FL; Grunwald Gallery of Art in Bloomington, IN; and the Barrett Art Center in Poughkeepsie, NY. Weiner currently lives and works in Los Angeles, CA.