Galleri Christoffer Egelund proudly presents here for awhile by Australian artist Mia Pensa. Mia Pensa explores the quiet persistence of habit and the transformative power of repetition through a series of complex, textural paintings. here for awhile is Pensa’s first solo exhibition in Europe and at the gallery, featuring seventeen new works created specifically for this presentation. Experience Mia Pensa’s meditative and sensuous universe from November 8 to December 5, 2025, with an opening reception on Friday, November 7, from 17:00 to 19:00.

The exhibition here for awhile reflects Pensa’s sustained investigation into time, materiality, and the visual rhythm that emerges from her study of pattern, movement, and the living systems of nature.

Her practice stems from a deep attentiveness to nature and its cycles – from warm, life-dense ecosystems to the small, subtle shifts that reveal the rhythm and reciprocity of the natural world. The works move between abstraction and figuration, evoking both topographies and anatomies: landscapes that breathe, and beings that dissolve into pattern.

Pensa describes here for awhile as “an ardent expression of the lessons relearned during my creative process.” To her, the studio functions as both sanctuary and laboratory – a place where repetition becomes revelation. “I am a creature of habit,” she says, “and this tendency I once tried to resist has instead become an instinct to trust and follow.” Through this cyclical working rhythm, Pensa connects to the lineage of post-minimalist process art, where the act of making itself becomes a meditative inquiry into time and presence.

Her paintings arise through a temporal layering of materials – textured surfaces of acrylic, sand, and fragments of cured paint. These sedimentary compositions recall the passage of time – both geological and emotional – and evoke the quiet persistence found in the works of artists such as Agnes Martin, Vija Celmins, and Brice Marden. At the same time, Pensa situates herself within a contemporary discussion of the expanded painting, where materiality and process take precedence over representation.

Drawing from her sketchbooks and earlier archives, Pensa constructs figures and forms that gradually emerge through layers of brushwork and erasure. Broad strokes dissolve into intricate patterns, where arabesque motifs and textile-like structures frame the compositions. This balance between control and intuition places Pensa within a feminine lineage of artistic sensibility, where material sensitivity and the role of ornament are emphasized and reclaimed as carriers of essential knowledge and meaning.

In here for awhile, time becomes both subject and medium. Each painting bears traces of prolonged attention. A vital aspect of Pensa’s new works lies in her color palette: the jungle is rendered harmless, and the tiger – a recurring motif throughout her practice – becomes filled with calm and silence. Through her sustained rhythm and patterned compositions, Pensa creates a language of care, sharpening the viewer’s awareness of repetition and gesture. She reveals how remaining – being here for a while – can itself be a form of movement. Her works invite viewers to linger, to rest within the pause, and to sense the subtle transformations that unfold within the quiet jungle.