MFTA Gallery: “All Night I Hear the Noise of Water Sobbing” by Mary Mattingly (Mondays – Fridays)
Materials for the Arts (MFTA) presents “All Night I Hear the Noise of Water Sobbing,” a solo exhibition featuring recent work by MFTA Artist-in-Residence Mary Mattingly. As MFTA’s Artist-in-Residence, Mattingly has had unlimited access to MFTA’s warehouse of donated supplies, where she has upcycled found objects to create the installations featured in her solo exhibition. Her life-long fascination for water permeates through “All Night I Hear the Noise of Water Sobbing,” swallowing the MFTA Gallery whole and leaving its visitors to meditate on the element’s simultaneous capacity to corrode and restore our physical and internal worlds.
Colorful assemblages of objects —pitchers, books, pedestals, ceiling medallions— varying in hues and height create a vibrant tableau. Fabric butterflies, plastic lemons, animal figurines made from metal and wood depict naturalistic elements and showcase the dichotomy between natural and synthetic. Unified by the water that courses through them, these fixtures’ renewal rests within this constant stream that breathes new life into the objects. In turn, this faint trickle invites gallery visitors to pause and take time, to sit with water, listen to it, emote with it, and consider all the wisdom life’s longest partner has to share.
Mattingly’s exhibition name, “All Night I Hear the Noise of Water Sobbing,” arose from the artist’s wanderings through the MFTA warehouse where she found a collection of poems written by Alejandra Pizarnik of the same title.
All Night I Hear the Noise of Water Sobbing” is on view through June 12, 2026.
The MFTA Gallery is open Mondays through Fridays from 9:30am to 4:30pm, excluding federal holidays.
Materials for the Arts
33-00 Northern Blvd, 3rd fl.
Long Island City, NY 11101
Image: Photo by Sefan Hagen.