2020 Exhibitions

Almonte + Brennan // Natalie Almonte, Matthew Brennan
Spatial Sensibilities // Jaquelyn Mendez
Illusions of Safety // Mär Martinez
Under Erasure // Zeshan Ahmed
The Implications of the Camera // Group Exhibition

Illusions of Safety

Mär Martinez is an interdisciplinary artist specializing in sculptural painting. Her work dissects dominance, aggression and power dynamics through the lens of a culturally-enforced binary system. She is pursuing a BFA in Painting and Art History at the University of Central Florida.

Selected Awards include: Jewish Art Salon Student Fellow, FusionFest Best in Show Award, Order of Pegasus Finalist, Katherine K. & Jacob Holzer Art Scholarship, Frank Lloyd Wright Scholar Recipient, and the Miniature Fine Arts Society Award. Solo Exhibitions include: Illusions of Safety, PA, and Schism, FL. Selected Exhibitions include: B20: Wiregrass Biennial, Alabama, Feminine/ Masculine, Hungary, 2020 College Invitational, Indiana, Artfields 2020, South Carolina, Chasing Shadows, Orlando, 29th Annual All-Florida Juried Arts Show, Stuart, Figure it Out!, Georgia, Celebrating Hispanic Artists & Culture Juried Art Show, Florida, and the National Endowment for the Arts Station Eleven Art Exhibition, Florida.        

      In 2020, Martinez was Artist-in-Residence at printmaking-focused residency, Temporary Stay in Florida. She recently served as Artist-in-Residence at The Spruce in Pennsylvania, where she conducted visual research through her sculptural paintings. She can be reached at www.marmartinezart.com or @meatvoid on Instagram.

Spatial Sensibilities

Jaquelyn Mendez is an artist based in New Jersey. She received a MFA in 2019 from the SUNY University at Albany and a BFA from the College of Saint Rose (2014). She works primarily in painting; work that focuses largely on the formal aspects of 2D media in relation to contemporary spaces and design.

Mendez’s 2020 exhibition featured her colorful and imaginative painted interiors.

Almonte + Brennan

Natalia Almonte (b.1988) was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and currently lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. Almonte an MA from Christie’s Education, New York, for Art History and the Art Market: Modern and Contemporary Art (2013), a Post-Baccalaureate from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (2011), and a BA from Boston College for Studio Art and Italian (2010). While at Christie’s she received the Alumni Association Award for Contemporary Art Connoisseurship. Her solo and collaborative work has been shown at galleries in Puerto Rico such as Área: Lugar de Proyectos (2017), La Casa Ashford (2016) and Flight Cult (2015), and the Arnold and Sheila Aronson Gallery in New York (2018). Almonte co-founded Stripes Studio and Gallery in Tannersville, New York (2012-15). She was acknowledged for the aiding in the publishing of the monograph written by Elizabeth Frank, Karen Gunderson: The Dark World of Light (Abbeville Press, 2016).

Natalia Almonte practices tradition and awareness of history as a method for protesting the current status of Puerto Rico as a politically unrecognized country. Almonte coined the term “melancolonia” to define colonialism as a state of being, manifesting on the body, psyche and land. Almonte makes site specific installations composed of video, sound, light, text, found objects, sculptures, and works on paper. By reconfiguring archival material, contemporary culture, and science, she emphasizes that despite being more than a century since the island became a US colony, it continues to encounter neglect.

Matthew Brennan (b. 1983) is based out of New York City and has a BFA from Pratt Institute. Since 2005, his drawings, paintings and sculptures have been exhibited throughout the United States. Brennan’s artistic practice is rooted in drawing and he has been an active member of the figure drawing community within NYC. His first solo show took place in April 2018, where he showcased four years of drawings based on the inspiration of swimming fish applied to human movement. Aside from personal artwork, he has made illustrations for the New York Times and has fabricated puppets and props for clients including The Jim Henson Company, Puppet Heap and The New York City Opera. These sculpturally based jobs have greatly informed his techniques for creating composition and dimension within his work. His drawings are also heavily inspired by collage, multiple exposure photography and technical diagrams. Current exhibitions include The Providence Art Club and The Binghamton University Art Museum and he attended The Spruce Art Residency in February of 2020.