Mishkin Gallery: Exhibition Opening | Anna Ostoya: J M Z

Mishkin Gallery
Baruch College (CUNY)
135 E 22nd Street
New York, NY 10010

Mishkin Gallery is pleased to present a series of 15 paintings by Anna Ostoya, on view from September 13 through December 13, 2024. The paintings on display are derived from sketches that Ostoya made upon her arrival in New York City in 2008 of fellow passengers on the J, M, and Z lines along her commute between Brooklyn and Manhattan. In vivid colors and kaleidoscopic compositions, Ostoya creates images that are at once intimate and removed, representational and surreal. These multifaceted images of individuals, all of whom occupy the shared public space of the subway, contend with fundamental political dimensions of identity and democracy. For this series, Ostoya remasters, in oil on canvas, a set of digital collages she produced for a book with political philosopher Chantal Mouffe. Throughout her career, Ostoya has often translated between media, integrating found texts and images (as well as images from her own archive of works) and collaborating with writers and thinkers. Following this, the exhibition is accompanied by a booklet designed by Olya Domoradova with newly commissioned texts by several artists, musicians, and poets, including Moyra Davey, Mónica de la Torre, Lamin Fofana, Angie Keefer and Mark von Schlegell.

Anna Ostoya: J M Z is co-curated by Mishkin Gallery’s Alaina Claire Feldman and Alexandra Tell. The exhibition is made possible by Friends of the Mishkin Gallery and the Weissman School of Arts and Sciences at Baruch College (CUNY).

Anna Ostoya (b. 1978 in Kraków, Poland) lives and works in New York. Her work has been shown at Kunsthaus Baselland, Muttenz, Switzerland; Tate St. Ives, United Kingdom; the 2015 Lyon Biennial, France; the Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; the Power Plant Toronto, Canada; the CCS Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY; Manifesta 7 Rovereto, Italy; Lisson Gallery, London, United Kingdom; and the Second Athens Biennial, Greece.

Ostoya has had solo exhibitions at Zacheta National Gallery, Warsaw, Poland; La Kunsthalle Mulhouse, France; CCA Kronika, Bytom, Poland; and with galleries: Bortolami, New York; tegenboschvanvreden, Amsterdam; and Silberkuppe, Berlin. She studied at the Parsons School in Paris, the Städelschule in Frankfurt, and the Whitney Independent Study Program in New York.