Meso Level
Gloria Maximo
GALLERY II & III
Gloria Maximo, Grocery Security Guard, Domestic Work 2, 2025, acrylic gouache on canvas, 30 × 24 inches.
October 18–November 16, 2025
Opening reception: Saturday, October 18, from 6–8pm
A.I.R. Gallery is pleased to present Meso Level, an exhibition of new paintings by Gloria Maximo that highlight the interconnections and exchanges among diverse forms of labor. Reframing the binary between productive and reproductive labor, Maximo images her own lived experiences of service industry and caregiving work, bringing a heightened attention to the economic value systems that we inherit and embody. Maximo is an inaugural recipient of the A.I.R. Commissioning Program for Mid-Career Women and Non-Binary Artists, a new initiative that aims to bolster A.I.R.’s longstanding commitment to supporting artists in building sustainable and enriching artistic practices.
The exhibition’s title refers to the level of social science analysis layered between those of the micro (individuals and local elements such as families and neighborhoods) and macro (societies and global structures like nations and civilizations). In contrast, the meso level deals with interactions and relationships within and between communities, as well as those between the micro and macro levels themselves. Similarly, Maximo draws upon her own lived experiences as an individual laborer to explore the interrelationships between herself, those around her, and the wider systems and structures in which we live and work.
Maximo’s paintings are subtle and atmospheric, featuring light washes of acrylic gouache in low-contrast earth tones. Structured by a compositional grid, they suggest familiar settings such as grocery store entryways and office interiors. Approaching spaces of work and acts of labor neither representationally nor didactically, Maximo instead makes room for a kind of multistable image to form—one in which the social and economic relationships and exchanges between individuals are never static or fixed.
The first group of paintings in the exhibition place Maximo’s own daily reproductive labor in relationship with the labor of those she regularly encounters in her life, from delivery drivers navigating the streets to grocery store security guards monitoring the flow of traffic in and out of doors. The titles of these works (Suburban Package Delivery, Childcare or City Street/Sidewalk Amazon Delivery, Childcare) foreground the intertwined networks that labor creates.
The second group of paintings engages with a specific place of work: the Department of Sociology at The City College of New York, where four of Maximo’s paintings have been installed in a conference room and two offices since March 2025. The paintings on view at A.I.R. bear a recursive relationship to these active spaces of academic and administrative work, tracing a constellation of social and economic relations.
Maximo’s paintings are a record—not of a particular place or moment but rather of a way of looking that is sensitive to our shared contexts. Inviting us to reconsider our own relationships to labor and value, Maximo positions work as a means of connection through which we might better perceive and value ourselves and those around us.
Initiated in 2024, the A.I.R. Commissioning Program for Mid-Career Women and Non-Binary Artists biannually provides three local artists with financial and curatorial support toward the creation of new work. With an emphasis on women and non-binary artists of color who have been exhibiting for at least ten years but have not yet received widespread recognition, the program seeks to envision a more equitable ecosystem of support for artists underserved by the current arts ecosystem.
The A.I.R. Commissioning Program is made possible by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council and the generous support of The Rockefeller Brothers Fund Culpeper Arts & Culture Program and two anonymous donors.
Gloria Maximo lives and works in Queens, NY. Her art spans painting, performance, and video, and has been exhibited at the Gray Center for Arts and Inquiry (University of Chicago), Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) and the Queens Museum in New York City. Maximo’s work highlights the interconnections and exchanges among diverse forms of labor. Informed by her relations and histories, Maximo’s work aims to explore concepts of relationality to expand understanding within social and economic contexts, fostering more inclusive and equitable exchanges.
View the Press Release here.