Maja Ruznic

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 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