PENUMBRA WORKSPACE PROGRAM | NYC | 2020
Martyna Szczęsna
Martyna Szczęsna uses photography and sculpture to create photograms that reference mechanical tropes and processes as metaphor. Her conceptual interests span a variety of interconnected ideas. These include urban ecology, human intervention, incongruity, disruption, topography, and fractured identity. Martyna's recent series GOBOS - comprising sculptures made out of slumped glass - speak both to industrialization and uncertainty. At Penumbra Foundation, Martyna will continue to experiment with photograms while investigating solarization techniques, colorization, and scale. We were especially impressed with how Martyna combines in her work the conflicts of utopian constructs with the sublime.
–Monique Deschaines (Director Euqinom Gallery, Member of the 2020 Jury).
Image © Martyna Szczęsna. Courtesy of the artist.
“[… ] Preoccupied with heterotopias, thirdspace and temporary autonomous zones, my work investigates faltering utopias as sites of ideological dissonance or simultaneous resilience. Pairing with distressed or fragile materials, phenomenological effects of fugitive color and surface as well as precarious assembly; form and content seek to embody the somatic effects of incongruity and disruption through the use of mechanized tropes such as serial repetition and industrial processes .The end result: bifurcation or meiosis, depending on who you ask.[ …]”
Martyna Szczęsna (b. Olsztyn, Poland) is a multi-disciplinary artist working between photography and sculpture to unpack the conflict between image and reality. Her work pursues an urban surrealism whose disruptive somatic effects point toward ideological dissonance reflecting the culture at large. Szczęsna is a graduate of the Cooper Union and completed MFA studies at UCLA. She lives and works in Brooklyn. Recent exhibitions include: Ground Control at Under the Oven Gallery, LES, Portrait of a Landscape at the Museo Sivori, BsAs, Disarming Geometries at Dorsky Gallery, LIC and Bronx Calling: The Third Bronx Biennial. Her work has been supported by residencies at Yucca Valley Material Lab, Franconia Sculpture Park, HDTS Wagonstations and The Watermill Center.
