MARC STRAUS

MARC STRAUS is pleased to present an exhibition of new work by Martha Mysko on the occasion of her first solo exhibition.

Martha Mysko uses desolated materials to create restless compositions that upon close inspection are deluged in harmonious abstraction and beauty. Mysko’s work at times brings to mind a screen of a bad TV where the image flickers between reality and fantasy. Discarded electronics, lumber, furniture, and masonry are the tools of her trade. Her acquisitions distinctly become her own language; checkerboard flooring, pillows, textiles and drywall are among her materials, hand painted to create just the right environment.

Her work investigates the current state of consumerism with a critical eye, but concurrently derives from and depends on it; one man gathers what another man spills. Mysko creates her own space, sometimes wall bound two-dimensional objects, other times complete environments that entrap. These constructs remind of Jessica Stockholder but Mysko, a generation later, is less entropic. Indeed her work seems incomplete without people – without us. Material objects have redefined their purpose, as individual creations full of form. A Rubik’s Cube only has one solution, but the steps to get there vary greatly.

Sometimes it just takes an art ist to show us the way to solve the puzzle. Martha Mysko was born in Baltimore, Maryland in 1982, and received her MFA in Painting from Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan in 2011. She was an artist in residence at The Homestead AK in Alaska (2009) and Takt Kunstprojektraum in Berlin (2008). Mysko has exhibited throughout the United States, and in Austria and Germany. The artist currently lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.