Steven Mayer
Other Hills
June 11–July 18, 2026

Building on the tradition of Arcadian landscape, Steven Mayer imagines worlds within worlds that are both familiar and uncanny, creating scenes shaped by pastoral calm and subtle narrative tension. Informed by his background as a piper, Mayer’s practice also explores the affective and structural qualities of received or encountered fairy music within this tradition, including its repetition, harmonics, and the role it plays as a threshold phenomenon in lonely places. Grottoes and groves are presented as spaces that echo strange harmonies, where otherworldly figures enact the rituals of longing, chasing, and hiding—offering a glimpse of the mystery games played in the countries of love and magic.

 

Steven Mayer (b. 1986, Pequannock, NJ) earned his BFA from the Tyler School of Art at Temple University (2009) and his MFA from Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University (2014). Mayer has exhibited work in group exhibitions including Troll Survival Craft at Beauty Gallery, Frenchtown, NJ (2024); Forest Temple at Pretty Garden, New York, NY (2024); and Invisible Selves at Sykes Gallery, Millersville, PA (2021). In 2019, He was a resident artist at The Cill Rialaig Project in Ballinskelligs, County Kerry, Ireland. Mayer lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.