Past Residents

List Grid

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

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Poland

Past Resident
2022: International Visegrad Fund

Artist

Marta Krześlak

Marta Krześlak uses video, collage, electrical components and found material to create kinetic and spatial installations. Her work constructs landscapes from both memory and imagination, while experimenting with scale and kitsch to renegotiate decisions already made within discarded objects, pushing them into the realm of the absurd. By putting her work in motion, she provokes a choreography of movements between object and visitor, creating an ever-shifting frame of reference through which to view the universe.

Marta Krześlak has exhibited work at Zachęta National Gallery Project Room, Warsaw; Gdansk City Gallery; and Muzeum of Art, Łódź, among others.

The tornado over the chamomile box house is a mobile with spinning objects from my garage. You could say that a storm is a permanent state, but often invisible. I am interested in movements that cannot be seen. The movement of particles when you move or the passage of time – but also things and phenomena that we notice from a certain perspective because their reference point has changed.

Marta Krześlak, Tornado, 2021, kinetic object, 40 × 150 × 40 in. (101.6 × 381 × 101.6 cm).

The looped poetic narrative in the accompanying projection gradually changes perspective from the scale of the universe, through the desert, to the artist’s home. Then her multiplied silhouette becomes a stellar constellation, to finally turn out to be the morning dew. The projection is accompanied by a soundtrack topped, perversely, by the song ‘My Heart Will Go On’. The film can be interpreted in many ways: symbolically, pop-culturally, nostalgically or purely aesthetically.

Marta Krześlak, Moving Things, 2021, video, 6:58 min..

The gallery space is a two-room apartment from the early 20th century. In one of the rooms I project a video of a semi-absurd dream. The projection takes up the entire wall, looking through the windows from outside it seems to be a passage to another dimension. The video is accompanied by a mix of songs from the 90s processed in post-production. The cli- max of the video is a progressively louder fragment of the song All by myself combined with a randomly edited image of a girl galloping on a horse. The girl’s dress flashes changing co- lors, the lights in the room blink reacting to the high notes in the song throwing sparkles to illuminate the room and towards the end the lamps begin to move with the spinning dress. After 9 minutes, the song quiets down, the video and lamps turn off, the room lights up.

Marta Krześlak, Home on a windy night, 2021, video, moving lamps and arduino, 8:55 min..

Installation Stars Cry is a bitter-sweet tale about ourselves. I try to develop this piercingly sad story tapping into affective, atmospheric, nostalgic emotions coded in our memory and dig deeper into the moments of rapture – immensely grotesque in their visual appeal. Welcome to the predicted distant future. A dream takes you into a parallel world where the only witness is the light of a night lamp standing by the bed.

Marta Krześlak, Stars Cry, 2019, multimedia installation, dimensions variable.

The ruins of my dreams are an unnecessary object turned into a sentimental landscape. I try to to detach it from its remembered utility and give it a poetic function. I am interested in the aesthetics of plastic, inflatable castles and the absurdity of their indestructibility. I inflate a huge found castle like a fantastic dream and I invite you to walk on its surface. The waving giant is accompanied by pop, love songs from the 90s, sung sung by me and processed in postproduction.

Marta Krześlak, Ruins of my dreams, 2018, installation and audio, 300 × 400 × 100 in. (762 × 1016 × 254 cm).

Residents from Poland

Magdalena Ciemierkiewicz

Poland

International Visegrad Fund

2024

Nadia Markiewicz

Poland

International Visegrad Fund

2023

Maess Anand

Poland, Germany

Polish Cultural Institute New York, The Adam Mickiewicz Institute, Krupa Gallery

2023