Metaphysical Locksmithing
New Sculptures and Paintings by Mary Gagler
May 6-12, 2025 12-7pm
75 Varick, NYC
Metaphysical Locksmithing is an Artist Spotlight booth presented for SPRING/BREAK 2025 PARADISE LOST + FOUND that features recent paintings and sculptures by Mary Gagler.
Metal Sculptures in Metaphysical Locksmithing imagine a transcendental object that can be applied to solving ineffable problems, or at least suggesting that rare solutions are possible. As handheld objects, works in the key series acknowledge the fraught world of thoughts and suggest a path back to the world of the senses.
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Each work in the series is composed of an assemblage of scrap metal, collected from various places that Gagler has worked. These parts are collected based on their subjective metaphorical possibility, and combined according to an intuitive process. Each sculpture is welded, ground, polished, and left uncoated to allow for the piece to rust and exhibit the passage of time.​
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Similar to the metal sculptures, the oil paintings derive from imagining encounters between utopia and the broken aspects of the capitalist world. Surreal figures crossover from utopia and witness social constrictions and expectations that result in joylessness and the need for escape. The bright palette of candy colors is meant to appeal to viewers and promote identification with the utopian visitors.
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The paintings and sculptures in Metaphysical Locksmithing suggest that liberation is possible and within reach. These works point to openings—moments where imagination overrides constraint and the inner world offers real tools for navigating the outer one.
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Artist Bio
Mary Gagler is a multidisciplinary artist based in Baltimore, MD, whose work spans sculpture, mixed media, and painting. Her practice examines the tension between inner experience and social reality, transforming observations and personal emotions into sculptural forms. Drawing on industrial processes and intuitive construction, Gagler welds and assembles steel fragments and mixed media into symbolic forms—such as interpretive keys, oversized cigarette butts, and "Fabergé omelets"—that serve as critiques of societal absurdity, metaphors for spiritual resistance, and liberation.
Gagler’s work has been exhibited at the Spring/Break Art Show in 2025, 2023 and 2022, and she has contributed to the cultural field as a curator, gallery director, educator, and writer, curating exhibitions for Spring/Break in 2018, 2019, and 2020. Her solo and group exhibitions reflect a commitment to both technical exploration and conceptual exploration. She was the Gallery Director at Amos Eno Gallery in Brooklyn and Exhibitions Director at the Art School at Old Church, and she held residencies and internships at Mudhouse Residency on Crete and an Indigenous-run arts center in remote Australia.
She received a BA from Earlham College in Art History, and an MA in Art History and Museum Studies at The City College of New York. Her curatorial projects highlight the work of local contemporary artists, while her research focuses on contemporary Indigenous Australian art and its impact on culture, civil rights, and land issues.
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