M+B is pleased to present Phase Shift, Mariah Robertson’s fourth solo exhibition with the gallery. The exhibition will be on view for a limited run from Friday, February 27 through February 28, 2026, with an opening reception on Friday, February 27, from 6 to 8 pm.
Phase Shift is a term borrowed from physics describing the return to a familiar bend in a spiral at a different moment in time, the same underlying structure, evolving. Phase Shift is an exhibition composed of two distinct but interrelated projects, intentionally presented during a liminal period in the gallery’s ongoing remodeling, when the space remains raw and unfinished.
12, 2012 is installed floor to ceiling and occupies a large vertical volume, directly interacting with the architecture of the building. Similar installations have been shown at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the National Museum for Women in the Arts, Washington, DC, and with Robertson’s first exhibition in a group show at M+B in 2012. The second work, No. 1, 2026, will debut a floor-only installation, with the 575-foot by 10-inch work laid on its side in an eight-foot-diameter spiral.
While the unframed roll works reflect Robertson’s established materials-based practice, the risograph book, unveiled publicly here for the first time after ten years of development, introduces a more image-centered project that incorporates humor, visual mischief, and lived experience gathered through travel, ranging from Venice, Italy to Accra, Ghana, without resolving into conventional autobiography. The four-inch-thick, edition of 11, yet untitled risograph book is approximately 88% complete; it is both a physical object and an installation, bound with an oversized spiral and distributed across three double-sided floating walls showing nearly 400 pages of prints floor to ceiling.
Chapters include Blood Garden, which consists of manipulated iPhone photos of domestic plants in the front yards of Silver Lake, Los Angeles, drawing out anthropomorphic and absurd possibilities in cacti and foliage, which echo shapes in human bodies; a chapter of male nude photographs and drawings from life, made during public life drawing sessions at Tom of Finland House and printed on a full spectrum of colored base papers; and a chapter on feminist rage button drawings, using words such as pause, eject, and refuse, where ribald humor and visual mischief recur throughout the book. All material in the book sits astride the crossroads of madness and insight, no matter which direction it is ultimately heading.
Mariah Robertson (b. 1975, raised in Sacramento, California) is a New York–based artist. She received her B.A. from the University of California, Berkeley, and her M.F.A. from Yale University. Solo installations include presentations at the BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, UK; Van Doren Waxter, New York; M+B, Los Angeles; and a permanent installation commissioned for the United States Consulate in Erbil, Iraq. Her work is held in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Guggenheim Museum, New York; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the Art Institute of Chicago; the National Gallery of Art; and the National Museum of Women in the Arts, among others. This exhibition at M+B runs concurrently with a show of Robertson’s photograms and paintings at CHART Gallery, New York City.