Maja Ruznic

Maja Ruznic, On the Other Side, 2023. Oil on canvas, 100 × 150 in. (254 × 381 cm)

A Conversation: Maja Ruznic and Cecilia Alemani
at Karma New York
Wednesday, June 26, 4–5pm

22 East 2nd Street
New York, New York 10003

Karma presents a conversation between artist Maja Ruznic and Cecilia Alemani, the Donald R. Mullen Jr. Director & Chief Curator of High Line Art, on the occasion of Ruznic’s exhibition The World Doesn’t End at 22 & 188 East 2nd Street, New York, on view from June 26-August 23, 2024.

Maja Ruznic (b. Bosnia and Herzegovina, 1983) fuses personal narrative, psychoanalysis, mythology, and esoteric thought into vivid paintings that hybridize figuration and abstraction. Painting variably with oils and gouache on immense and small scales alike, she extracts order from layers of diluted pigment. Ruznic’s practice is informed by her studies, from Slavic shamanism and alchemy to Jungian psychoanalysis and sacred geometry. Imbued with a discordant beauty, her compositions emerge without a premeditated outcome. Ruznic’s introspective, mystical approach places her into a lineage of visionary painters including Paul Klee and Hilma af Klint. Ruznic lives in Placitas, New Mexico.

Cecilia Alemani is an Italian curator based in New York City. Since 2011, she has been the Donald R. Mullen, Jr. Director & Chief Curator of High Line Art, the public art program presented by the High Line in New York City. Currently, she is also overseeing the 12th edition of the SITE Santa Fe International, scheduled to open in June 2025. From 2020 to 2022, she served as artistic director of the 59th Venice Biennale, where she curated the acclaimed exhibition The Milk of Dreams, which was visited by over 800,000 visitors.

Read more and register HERE

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Maja Ruznic, The Past, the Present and The Future in the Chest of One Man, 2023, oil on linen, 100 × 76 inches

Breathwork Workshop:
Maja Ruznic, Geometry of Exile
Saturday, September 23, 6:30–7:30 pm

Karma
7351 Santa Monica Boulevard
Los Angeles, California

Karma presents a workshop in breathwork and meditation on the occasion of Maja Runznic’s exhibition at Karma, Geometry of Exile. Dr. Morgan F. Smith will guide participants through exercises within the gallery, surrounded by Ruznic’s abstract paintings.

Read more and register HERE

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Maja Ruznic, Spider Mother, 2023, oil on linen, 70 × 50 inches; 177.8 × 127 cm

A Conversation: Maja Ruznic and Simone Krug
at Karma, Los Angeles
Saturday, September 16, 4–5 pm

7351 Santa Monica Boulevard
Los Angeles, California

Karma presents a conversation between artist Maja Ruznic and Simone Krug, curator, Aspen Art Museum, on the occasion of Geometry of Exile, Ruznic’s exhibition at Karma, Los Angeles.

Read more and register HERE

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Maja Ruznic, Untitled, 2022, gouache on paper, 9¾ × 7⅛ inches; 24.77 × 18.11 cm, 15¼ × 12¾ inches; 38.73 × 32.38 cm (framed)

Maja Ruznic in Shadow Tracer: Works on Paper
at the Aspen Art Museum
December 9, 2022—April 2, 2023

Aspen Art Musem
637 East Hyman Avenue
Aspen, Colorado 81611

This exhibition delves specifically into the inherent experimental spirit of drawing. Using fantasy and the subconscious as a point of departure, Shadow Tracer: Works on Paper considers the ways artists express their interior worlds. Placing recent works by Carmen Argote, Naotaka Hiro, Hanna Hur, Jutta Koether, Joshua AM Ross, and Maja Ruznic in dialogue, this show explores how these artists employ the medium of drawing to navigate this theme. These pieces contemplate the intrinsic performative element of drawing, a medium that has the ability to conjure worlds beyond our own with the very physical tools within our own realms. The act of drawing is akin to creating architectural or written plans, which also suggests a kind of potential, giving life to dreams.

Read more and register HERE

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Maja Ruznic in Unmatter
at Eduardo Secci, Milan
April 28 — August 5, 2022

Piazza Carlo Goldoni, 2
50123 Firenze FI, Italy

Eduardo Secci gallery is pleased to announce the group show “Unmatter” curated by Alberto Fiz, featuring works by Joshua Hagler, Luisa Rabbia, and Maja Ruznic. The opening will take place on Thursday, April 28, 2022 in Milan

Read more HERE

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Maja Ruznic, Siege, 2019, oil on canvas, 80 × 70 inches; 203.2 × 177.8 cm

Robert F. Agrella Gallery
Santa Rosa Junior College
Visiting Artist Lecture Series
Maja Ruznic
March 17, 2021, 3:30 PM

The Robert F. Agrella Gallery will be hosting an artist talk featuring the work of Maja Ruznic.

Ruznic states, “I realized when I could see the tooth of the canvas, the canvas is breathing. That is a different kind of texture”. Ruznic starts by pouring thin layers of previously used Gamsol (paint thinner) from her preceding paintings. There is no waste in this methodology, one painting grows out of the other. This is Ruznic’s signature mark-making, using gravity to place color and form onto the canvas or paper, which she then re-negotiates with line and brushwork.

Her double major in art came after studying psychology, and some of these studies indicated to her the way that memory exists in the mind. It is not a static thing that is recalled and then put back in its place; it is a living, developing idea which is never really objective. Ruznic’s work is like this, a dream object. This is by design, as she wants the viewer to feel as if they are trying to capture a cloud in a bottle – something that seems plausible but no one has ever done.

You can register for the Zoom Webinar here.

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Maja Ruznic, Ancestors II, 2020, acrylic and oil on linen, 100 × 76 inches; 254 × 193.04 cm

In the Sliver of the Sun:
Maja Ruznic
March 6-September 26, 2021

The Hartwood Museum
238 Ledoux Street
Taos, New Mexico 87571

The works in this series, titled  In the Sliver of the Sun, depict ghostly figures that arouse a sense of touch through erasure. Simultaneously fading into and emerging from the horizon, they seem to be returning from a long journey. Ruznic uses thin stains and washes of acrylic and oil paint to create the initial compositions for these works. She builds up the surfaces by scumbling and layering, then sands the dry paint to expose the tooth and texture of the canvas. This unique subtractive process leaves us with a sense of ghostly materiality—an undefined absence.

Maja Ruznic was born in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1983. After fleeing the Bosnian War, she and her family immigrated to the United States in 1995. She went on to study at the University of California, Berkeley and received her MFA from California College of the Arts. Ruznic’s experiences as a Bosnian war refugee and immigrant prefaced her artistic preoccupations with history, myth, suffering, and trauma. Vivid and darkly humorous, her figures emerge from the canvas with the hazy incandescence of memory.

She has exhibited internationally and her work has been written about extensively, most notably in Artforum, ArtMaze Magazine, Juxtapoz, New American Paintings, Studio Visit Magazine, and the San Francisco Bay Guardian. Ruznic lives and works in Roswell, New Mexico.

Virtual Exhibition Opening – Friday, March 12th at 5:30 pm
Zoom Link: https://unm.zoom.us/j/93240886028
Passcode: 422405

Artist Talk – Thursday, April 22nd at 5:30 pm
Zoom Link: https://unm.zoom.us/j/98891283412
Passcode: 301490