ETHAN COHEN GALLERY I TRANSMUTATION I NEW YORK CITY, FALL 2025

Transmutation: A Visual and Sonic Metamorphosis of the Self, the System and the Shadow

New York, NY – Ethan Cohen Gallery is pleased to present Margaret Innerhofer: Transmutation. This marks Innerhofer’s second solo exhibition with the gallery.

Transmutation explores the metamorphosis of the psyche through cycles of collapse and reconstitution, both personal and collective. The show investigates how inner states are mirrored by external structures, how obsolete systems haunt the present, and how, through collapse, new consciousness emerges. Drawing from Jungian archetypes, alchemical symbology, and the collective and personal subconscious, the work becomes a ritualized site for inner and outer transfiguration.

Transmutation is presented across two floors, each with a distinct function.

UPPER LEVEL

The upper level reimagines the artist’s Beacon, New York studio. Rationalist and mid-century modern furnishings are deployed as sculptural elements amid personal mementos, surrounded by works from recent U.S. and European exhibitions with the gallery. The room invites viewers into the fertile ground from which her practice emerges.

LOWER LEVEL

On the lower level, Transmutation unfolds counterclockwise across delineated wall segments, forming a directional linear journey—a psychic mapping through time, geography, and emotional states. MUTTER/PATRIEA, RUDOLF, RUPTURE, ETHER, TREES.

SOUNDSCAPE

Composed by the artist, the soundscape for Transmutation functions as an autobiographical transcription—an aural analogue to the visual and sculptural interventions on view. Built from wind recordings, bass guitar, and deep organ tones in A minor chord, it sustains a drone of gravity and permanence. A stripped-down bass phrase— limited to A, C, and E—circulates minimally, resisting resolution into melody. It holds the space in suspension, hovering between music and atmosphere.

In dialogue with the mountain mural, fascist symbols, ancestral imprints, dissolved intimacy, and the architectonic wooden monoliths, the sound evokes both the authoritarian weight of monumentality and the tenderness of homeland, mother, and memory. It oscillates between power and vulnerability, history and love.