With Three Works by Athena LaTocha, the viewer enters into conversation with the industrial architecture of the Biergarten Gallery at Mana Contemporary in Jersey City, New Jersey, opening October 25, 2026.
Athena’s practice begins with sustained attention to place—to its histories, materials, traces, and forces. Working with ink, soil, demolition sediment, artist-made charcoal, paper, lead, and sound, she transforms what is often intangible into physical matter. Her surfaces carry evidence of contact: what has been encountered, displaced, erased, accumulated, and left behind. History becomes material—layered, transformed, and made visible. Here, scale demands a physical encounter. The works ask viewers to move across and around them, to experience their surfaces gradually and bodily. And yet, within their monumentality, there is vulnerability. Paper, metal, pigment, and sound register the fragility of contact—and the enduring reality that even what appears solid remains subject to pressure, change, and time.
A public opening will take place on October 25th from 12 PM to 6 PM. The exhibition is on view through May 31, 2027.
Image courtesy of the Artist and Mana Contemporary. Photography by Jason Mandella.