Monika Malewska
Monika Malewska was born in Warsaw, Poland. She received her BFA from the University of Manitoba in Canada and her MFA from the University of Texas at San Antonio. She is currently a Professor of Art at Juniata College in Pennsylvania.
Malewska works in several art media, particularly painting, drawing, and photography. Her work has been shown in various galleries and museums, including Phoenix Gallery (NYC), Blank Space Gallery (NYC), Denise Bibro Fine Art Gallery (NYC), Camel Art Space (Brooklyn, NY), the Blue Star Complex (San Antonio, TX), the Benton Museum (Storrs, CT), the New Britain Museum of American Art (New Britain, CT), Piekna Gallery (Warsaw, Poland), and Galerie Bessaud (Paris, France). Her work has been featured in Huff Post (Arts and Culture section), Direct Art Magazine, Hi-Fructose, Fresh Paint Magazine, Gastronomica: The Journal of Food and Culture, and other publications.
Artist Statement
My most recent paintings are predominantly oil and acrylic on canvas with vibrant gradient backgrounds. The subject matter of my work is playful, banal, and sometimes ambiguous, frequently focusing on representations of food and other objects of consumption as a reflection on the late stage of capitalism. My paintings manipulate the representation of objects to deconstruct the aesthetics of commercial ads and the politics of a world constituted by material desire.
On a formal level, I am interested in creating a visually dynamic configuration of shapes and objects that signal a departure from traditionally static still-life material. These works offer a series of illusionistic passageways, or portals, to other visual dimensions. The fragmented still-life elements in my paintings exist inside a multiverse of delineated shapes, like layers, seeming to conceal more than reveal. Overall, there is a sense of multistability—an ambiguous perceptual experience that shifts between two or more spatial interpretations, providing new visual experiences.
monikamalewska.com
