Published 4 SEP 2024

Opening – 12 SEP 2024, 6-8 pm
13 SEP until 26 OCT 2024

Contemporary Fine Arts is thrilled to present Mutter, Maja Ruznic’s first solo exhibition at the gallery. On view across both floors of the gallery are fourteen paintings by the New Mexico-based artist, created between 2023 and 2024.

In Ruznic’s paintings, imagination and reality intertwine. Through scumbling—a technique where thin layers of color are layered over one another—the ethereal quality of her paintings is highlighted, reflecting the interplay between the tangible and the otherworldly. This method imparts a subtle depth and transparency, accentuating the multi-layered nature of the subjects. The exhibition title reinforces this effect through its ambiguous meaning: meaning mother in German, Mutter in English signifies a ‘barely audible utterance’, and functions in Ruznic’s work as an auditive counterpart of scumbling.

In her practice, the Bosnian-born artist explores themes such as origin, trauma and motherhood, drawing on intense memories from her childhood and family. These memories, often both obscured and empowered by the veil of time and emotional gravity, flow into Ruznic’s paintings enmeshed with spirits originating in the realm of imagination, such as in the works The Helpers and The Helpers II. Further, Ruznic unwaveringly arrives at new forms that explore the possibility of visual expression for the unconscious mind and inner conflicts, as inThe Child’s Throat, or The Beginning/The End.

Ruznic fuses her personal experiences with a wide range of themes, including psychoanalysis, poetry, surrealism and abstraction. In this sense, abstraction paves a path for profound emotional and psychological truths, and a possibility to transform the viewer’s perception through formal aspects such as form and colour. It remains open-ended, asks questions and leaves space for the unspoken, while figuration subtly suggests answers – a delicate balance that consistently resonates throughout Ruznic’s work.

Maja Ruznic was born in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1983 and currently lives and works in New Mexico. She earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of California, Berkeley, and a Master of Fine Arts from the California College of the Arts in San Francisco. Her work has been exhibited throughout the US and Europe. Her recent solo exhibitions include The World Doesn’t End at Karma in New York, Maja Ruznic: Migration of Spirits at the Tamarind Institute in Albuquerque, and In the Sliver of the Sun at the Harwood Museum of Art in Taos. She was also part of this year’s Whitney Biennial, Even Better Than the Real Thing, and is a recipient of the Hopper Prize. Her work is represented in several prestigious collections, including the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento, the Dallas Museum of Art, EMMA – Espoo Museum of Modern Art in Espoo, Finland, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, to name a few.