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

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.

Gus Van Sant: Recent Paintings, Hollywood Boulevard @ Vito Schnabel Projects In New York

Recent Paintings, Hollywood Boulevard is Van Sant’s first solo painting exhibition in New York. On view is a series of large-scale watercolors on stretched linen that collapse dreamlike impressions of urban Los Angeles with specific narratives inspired by the people and events Van Sant has observed since establishing his home in the city in the 1970s. Recent Paintings, Hollywood Boulevard is on view through November 1 at Vito Schnabel Projects 43 Clarkson Street, New York. photographs courtesy of Vito Schnabel Projects

Greg Ito & Honor Titus: Enter the Garden @ Penske Projects in Los Angeles

Multidisciplinary artists, Greg Ito and Honor Titus, are currently exhibiting their work in a group show at Penske Projects in Los Angeles. Both artists have taken the urban landscapes they have lived in and frequented, and reflected the beauty and the mystery of these cities in their respective artwork. While Ito uses iconography engrained in Los Angeles’s urban surroundings to express the many faces of the city, Titus focuses on depicting street scenes which encapsulate the memory of hot summer months spent in cities such as London, New York, and Paris. Ito and Titus’s complementary bodies of work come together in this exhibition to navigate the viewers through a tour of the magical urban gardens they have created through their work.

Greg Ito & Honor Titus: Enter the Garden is on view through July 27 at Penske Projects 4859 Fountain Ave, Los Angeles, California. photographs by Oliver Kupper