Past Residents

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Past Resident
2022: International Visegrad Fund

Artist

Szilvia Bolla

Szilvia Bolla’s work explores the interaction between humans and artifacts by combining photography, sculpture, and installation. Her practice, which she describes as cryptophotographic, is the result of light-sensitive crystals reacting to chemicals in photographic darkroom experiments. Interested in matter as a lively agent, the artist engages with new materialism and feminist corporeality to evoke survivalist narratives, and analyzes the relationship between the human body and technology.

Szilvia Bolla has exhibited work at Trafó Gallery, Budapest; Victoria & Albert Museum, London; and Stefan Gierowski Foundation, Warsaw, among others.

The installation is a sensual body machine with organs turned inside-out that becomes a target of the external world. Corporeal and exposed, it attempts to seek possible forms of survival within fictional and real bio/eco/psycho-spheres. It comes to matter through its own performativity, struggle to navigate the complexity of the profoundly human, nonhuman and technological, and ultimate relief in hybrid materiality. It reconstructs itself not as an organism or entity but as a series of open-ended systems functioning within other massive systems.

Szilvia Bolla, Oh, my howling bladder speaks to me at dawn, 2022, 3D printed PLA, metal, thermoformed recycled perspex and silicone.

Prevail is a site specific installation of artefacts referencing ornaments found in Eastern-European architecture, focusing on Hungarian Art Nouveau (reliefs either of organic patterns or depicting characters and narratives) as tools of symbolic thinking or a system of speculative storytelling.

Szilvia Bolla, Prevail, 2020, thermoformed, engraved perspex, mirror and hygienic gel.

Exoskin is a series of sculptures and text speculating on the analogy between the skin and image surfaces. The works draw on membrane structures, whether human or nonhuman, fictional or real, through organic abstraction and ornaments as tools of symbolic thinking. Beyond the human skin, my main fields of interest are observing its sensitivity to light and its resemblance to the nature of photographic images. As a shielding, yet vulnerable layer in its colour, texture, accumulated marks and blemishes, the membrane records and represents a vital organ.

Szilvia Bolla, Exoskin, 2018, metal and luminogram UV print on perspex.

The project Alagya created together with Aron Lodi aims to interpret the nature of artefacts with a post-human approach through a distinctive play between sculpture and text. Alagya embraces identity, hybrid materiality and technology to learn about what it means/how it feels to be a dweller of a world in which matter, tool, human and information are irrevocably intertwined.

Szilvia Bolla, Alagya in collaboration with Aron Lodi, 2022, metal, print on satin and charcoil.

Szilvia Bolla, Render me like the future renders a haunted heart, 2021, luminogram UV print on perspex, mirror and metal.

Residents from Hungary

Klára Orosz

Hungary

International Visegrad Fund

2024

Nikolett Balázs

Hungary

International Visegrad Fund

2023

Tamás Páll

Hungary

International Visegrad Fund

2021

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Czech Republic

Past Resident
2022: International Visegrad Fund

Artist

Radek Brousil

Using primarily textiles, ceramics, film, photography and video, Radek Brousil creates installations that address social testimony and present an activist stance on the future’s unpredictability. With an interest on post-colonial tendencies in the contemporary artistic discourse, Brousil examines these issues on a symbolic, individual, and emotional level. He characterizes social, cultural, and environmental problems using novel interpretations and terminology.

Radek Brousil has exhibited work at Komplot, Brussels; Futura, Prague; and Parisian Laundry, Montreal, among others.

Screenings: 68th International Short Film Festival Oberhausen, ELBE DOCK, 17th Athens Digital Arts Festival, PAF festival 2021

Radek Brousil, Can You Still Feel The Butterflies, 2021, short film, 13:17 min..

Radek Brousil, The Imagery Of Cry On Demand, 2019, installation and fabric sculptures.

Radek Brousil, Bluescreen for Brokoff, 2016, installation.

Radek Brousil, Standing, Holding a Waterlily, 2019, installation.

Radek Brousil, Standing, Holding a Waterlily, 2019, fabric sculpture from upcycled indie-emo t-shirts.

Residents from Czech Republic

Adrián Kriška

Slovakia, Czech Republic

International Visegrad Fund

2024

Nikola Ivanov

Czech Republic

International Visegrad Fund

2024

Ezra Šimek

Czech Republic

International Visegrad Fund

2023

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United States

Past Resident
2023: Toby Devan Lewis

Artist

Sarah Tortora

Sarah Tortora draws inspiration from canonical sculptures, urban infrastructure, and museum display. Her work alternates between relational warmth and misidentification, and functions parallel to language to create intuitive replicas of archetypal objects. Tortora’s work conjures the psychic displacement necessary to comprehend the cultural displacement such archetypes can induce. The artist accepts the premise that every equestrian monument is truly a Trojan horse, and questions legacies of labor across geological time.

Sarah Tortora has exhibited work at Ulterior Gallery, New York; C. Grimaldis Gallery, Baltimore; and NADA x Foreland, Catskill, among others.

Events & Exhibitions

2023 Spring Open Studios

April 21–April 22, 2023

2022 Fall Open Studios

November 18–November 19, 2022

A lifesize off-white vessel with a gritty papery texture, which has a black modelled gridded armature partially exposed. The vessel is not perfectly symmetrical. It undulates in a slightly awkward way. There is a black modelled Greek key design on the exterior of the vessel at the rim which encircles the form. Inside the vessel, a variety of pastel colors are mixed with white paint to create a subtle glowing effect within.

Sarah Tortora, Yolanda, 2018, paper pulp, epoxy clay, plywood, acrylic and latex paint, 35 × 64 × 36 in. (88.9 × 162.56 × 91.44 cm).

A life-size faded, grey, stone-textured vertical stele form sits atop a subdued lime green, smooth-textured rectangular pedestal which sits flat on the floor. The stele form is subtly curved in the shape of a gravestone. There is an organic, but rectangular shaped cutout in the center of the stele form, revealing its interior as well as a mosaic of wood fragments that are framed within the shallow interior of the cutout. The wood fragments are plywood, pine, and hardboard. Some of them are treated with a green or black paint wash. The wood mosaic forms taper off inside the form and consolidate toward the base.

Sarah Tortora, Tonguetied (Mirror for the Unthought Known), 2020, wood composites, plywood, pine, gypsum cement, acrylic and latex paint, 48 × 76 × 18 in. (121.92 × 193.04 × 45.72 cm).

This sculpture sits within a 3-4 foot square, and sits flat on the floor, extending no more than 40”in height. The bottom of this form is made of concrete which has different stones, minerals, and construction debris embedded in it. There are chunks of broken asphalt, large scallop shells, fragments of fallen graffiti, and unidentifiable minerals. The concrete and stones are cast in staggering layers; some stick out 3-4” from the central base form. There are also areas where black epoxy clay or epoxy resin had been modelled or poured over areas of shallow concrete. Appearing to be wedged within the concrete base is a fragmented drywall structure, which juts upward in enclosed, angular construction. On one side of the form, the concrete base is very short, and so are the drywall fragments. Toward the center, the concrete base gains height and so does the drywall form; utilizing larger and larger pieces of drywall toward the top of the form, which is cut into a crenelated, castle-like shape.

Sarah Tortora, Acropalypse, 2020, drywall, cement, epoxy resin, acrylic & latex paint, found minerals and construction debris, 38 × 33 × 44 in. (96.52 × 83.82 × 111.76 cm).

A sculpture comprised of a 4-‘5’ tall by 1’ wide cartoonish leg, appearing to move to the left, is thickly outlined by black painted wood, with an abstract, atmospheric recessed painting within this framing. Grey and white are the dominant colors painted on the leg, with occasional wisps of blue, yellow, and copper. Atop the leg sits a tapering white rectangular form, which extends perpendicularly from the leg on a downward tilt to the right, and hovers just over a massive stone-like structure to the right of the leg. The stone structure is approximately the same height as the leg, but three feet wide. It is a warm white, and the surface is sanded to reveal patches of light blue, green, and grey underneath. Embedded within this stone structure is a very graphic black X shape made from wood, that is not symmetrical. The upper left “leg” of the X meets the top of the leg to support the white tapering form, while the opposing upper right “leg” of the X is embedded fully in the stone structure.

Sarah Tortora, Wayward Queen, 2021, plywood, wood composites, gypsum cement, resin, acrylic and latex paint, 35 × 55 × 58 in. (88.9 × 139.7 × 147.32 cm).

This 6-7’ tall sculpture is in the shape of a right angle, and is positioned in a right angled corner of an architectural space, hovering about 5” in front of the walls. It is approximately 5” thick on either side before it turns 90 degrees, opening up like a book parallel to the walls. It is a large rounded stele form, with undulating curves toward the center of the 5” wide sides, resemblant of an instrument. The majority of its surface is a white, baby blue, and graphite stone-like texture. Toward the center of the form, particularly where it folds into a right angle, are fragmented pieces of wood which are arranged like a mosaic embedded into the stone like structure. The wood is adhered in several different directions, and while the natural character of the wood is retained, some pieces are painted black, washed glue, or tinted yellow. The overall frame/footprint of the embedded wood mosaic is an extremely undulating, curvilinear, cartoonishly organic shape. This overall shape moves from incredibly bulbous French curves, to sudden vertical lines, to organ like protrutions from a central form. There is one negative space cut out from the right side of the stone-like form, a 5" archway, that sits atop two horizontal fragments of wood. Sitting at the base of this archway is a translucent blue cast resin diamond, sitting on one of its side facets, approximately 3.5” in height and diameter.

Sarah Tortora, Geode, 2021, gypsum cement, plywood, pine, resin, acrylic and latex paint, 36 × 78 × 25 in. (91.44 × 198.12 × 63.5 cm).

Residents from United States

Jude Griebel

Canada, United States

Canada Council for the Arts

Studio #301

Dana Agal

United States, Qatar

Fire Station - Qatar Museums

Studio #209

Charlie Perez-Tlatenchi

United States, Mexico

The New York Community Trust’s Edward and Sally Van Lier Fund

Studio #303