The Mirror Blinked

OPENING RECEPTION: Friday, May 30, 5-7 pm at Open Studio.

.The Mirror Blinked is a collaborative body of work produced by artists Henry Gepfer and K. MacNeil. Both artists work at the intersection of print media and performance art as a means to explore interpersonal communication, miscommunication, and the intersubjectivity of relationships.

The Mirror Blinked documents an abstract performance between the artists, in which they stand on opposite sides of a hanging sheet of acrylic thickly coated in ink. As they use their hands and bodies to remove the ink, they endeavor to find, track, and mirror each other’s movements. In trying to connect, missing, and connecting again, this performance illustrates the dance of attempting to find each other through an opaque medium and the struggle to maintain connection.

The resulting prints represent a push and pull—of losing and finding—between two people having a conversation through a visual, performative language. Intertwining performance, animation, and monotype prints, The Mirror Blinked examines moments of symmetry, synchronicity, and communicative lapses between two people.

This work also serves as a reflection of the collaboration between the artists. Working together as friends with similar approaches, Gepfer and MacNeil explore the nature of their identities and “the face of the other” throughout this exhibition. The resulting uncanny impressions serve as a map of two artists working with—and literally against—each other.

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Henry Gepfer and K. MacNeil are the founders of (no) fine print, a performance incubator that has been hosted by the Mid America Print Council (2022) and the Southern Graphics Council International (2023, 2024). They have previously collaborated on an exhibition titled “Are We on the Same Page” for Fried Fruit Gallery in Wilmington, North Carolina (2024). In addition to their collaborative work, they each maintain practices as printmakers, performance artists, and educators. Henry Gepfer is an Assistant Professor in Printmaking at the University of Arkansas, and K. MacNeil is an Assistant Professor, Teaching Stream, in Printing History, Practice and Culture at the University of St. Michael’s College in the University of Toronto.

Sponsor acknowledgement: This exhibition is being generously supported via the Robert and Sandra Connor Faculty Fellowship awarded to Henry Gepfer by the University of Arkansas.