Martyna Szczęsna Addresses the Challenge of Creating Art in An Ever-Gentrifying Urban Landscape @ Open Source Gallery in New York

July 26, 2023

Spectre, 2023, ruched orange construction netting and rope, 12 x 32 x .5

In Martyna Szczęsna’s Spectre at Open Source Gallery, the artist has manipulated over 500 feet of nylon construction netting into an oversized ruched curtain, winding it through the KoKo NYC lot space. A playful embodiment of drama, opera and the challenges of securing hospitable space for art and creative expression in the ever-gentrifying urban landscape of this city. The blazing orange work will be on view all summer.

Martyna Szczęsna (b. Olsztyn, Poland) is a multi-disciplinary artist working with photography and sculpture. She is a graduate of the Cooper Union and completed her MFA studies at UCLA. Szczesna lives and works in Brooklyn. Select exhibitions include: ARRAY at Penumbra Foundation, If Rittenhouse– at Callicoon Fine Arts, Portrait of a Landscape at the Museo Sivori, BsAs, and Bronx Calling: The Third Bronx Biennial. Szczesna’s work has been supported by residencies at Yucca Valley Material Lab, Franconia Sculpture Park, HDTS Wagonstations, and The Watermill Center.

Spectre is on view through August 31st at Open Source KoKo NYC Lot at 440 19th Street, Brooklyn NY 11215.

Renata & Friends: A Photographic Essay Of Soft Sculpture By Cassandra Bickman

March 17, 2021

I was in a deep sleep one night at my great grandmother’s small town midwestern home, when suddenly I heard a loud crash downstairs. I put on her old blue silk robe, and walked down the rickety staircase to her green shag carpet basement with those old vinyl wooden walls, mugged with that dense musty smell midwestern basements have, with a slight scent of cigar smoke lingering in the air. To my surprise, The Versatile Henry Mancini and His Orchestra record was playing, and as I turned the corner, this strange silhouette was hanging from an old crystal chandelier, and another was laughing hysterically as it had crashed into the glass coffee table below. It was the strangest thing, it was 3am, and it appeared that I had walked into the winding down sloppy haze of a midnight soirée! As I further opened my eyes, I realized that it was my very own CLOSET that had come alive!! In awe, I sat down on the pink floral couch next to my favorite green suit whom introduced themselves to me as “Irene and Eileen the inflatable siamese twins”, they were classy yet bizarre, and were telling me an intriguing story about their favorite lizard named Susan and her popsicle stand in the desert.

*Irene & Eileen, The Inflatable Siamese Twins*

It was Renata hanging from the chandelier, who told me she was my dad’s lady friend, and Maude to my right, who told me she liked to model as she poured me a sparkling glass of champagne. My favorite white leather jacket Sally had a real swagger, and Toby was obsessively puffing away at my grandpa’s old cigars. Then out came stumbling this very unpredictable figure from the bathroom who was Nancy, she was telling us this absurd story about how she was once a nanny who became an assassin. In another corner sat Big Red, who was a bit frozen as he told me he drank some beetle juice and was feeling a bit stunned. I later found my black silk gown sitting on the floor as she had taken a slight dose of acid and was in the midst of an epiphany, her name was Tiffany. I partied with them until just before sunrise, when I passed out on that floral couch with a tantalized smile.

As I opened my eyes the next morning, I looked around to greet my new friends, yet they had all vanished into deflated empty piles of my very own clothes on the ground. When I told my grandma over coffee the next morning, she oddly just gave me a mischievous smirk when I told her what had happened, as if this wasn’t the first time this sort of thing happened here late at night. She said nothing more, and neither did I. Luckily, there was an old camera lying on the ground that night, and these photos that I snapped are all that I have left to reconcile the daze of this splendid, mysterious evening.