Marischa Slusarski (Artist’s Statement)
“All Wet”
Glimpses From the Drive Through Car Wash
These pieces were conceived during a period in which I was eager to find an additional road compatible with my increasingly abstract sensibility. I inadvertently found the inspiration literally behind the wheel at the drive through car wash. As I sought out various “exterior only” locations throughout Los Angeles, I began to experiment with digital effects, gleefully augmenting my raw, through-the-windshield images until they became something else, skewing technique, place and #nofilter politeness.
As our methods of making art have transformed since the advent of new digital media, the way we access and process art has also changed. “All Wet,” attempts to give unpretentious and accessible clues about how to see the ordinary in new ways. Stay curious: If you’re lucky, the unremarkably mundane might morph into something surprising.
Marischa Slusarski Artist’s Bio
Marischa Slusarski is an interdisciplinary-artist whose individual and collaborative projects have evolved in form and medium over the years, resulting in a body of work that challenges traditional boundaries. She has pursued a successful gallery career exhibiting paintings, sculpture, photography and digital media in the U.S., Europe and Asia. Her work is represented in museums and institutions as well as in many private and public collections. She has been written about in numerous print and online publications and her artworks have been featured in film, television, theater and rock concert set design.
Slusarski has worked as a performer, teacher, body painter, toy designer and curator. She has been a production designer for film, an art director for dance performances, and an art therapy counselor for at-risk youth with mental health issues. Earlier in her career, she founded “Underbelly Gallery” in London’s Shoreditch gallery district, presenting exhibitions, installations, live performances, and video and film festivals. In 2009, she started the painting program for Children Mending Hearts, an art exchange organization between homeless children in the U.S. and the Congo. In 2010, she was nominated as one of 300 artists nationwide for the USA Artists Fellowship Grant. In 2014, she was awarded an artist-in-residence program at the prestigious New Space Art Foundation in Hue, Vietnam. And last year, she studied and collaborated with the Volunteer Artists Studio of Thimphu in Bhutan.
Also recently, Slusarski and collaborator Britt Ehringer, founded “Namaak Collective,” an internationally renowned group of artists who seek to expose the revolutionary new ways we perceive and access art in the digital age. Recent collaborations have included shows at C-Space Gallery in Beijing, China, LAUNCH Gallery in Los Angeles, and New Space Foundation in Hue, Vietnam.
Solo Exhibitions
2008 The Bruise of Human Contact, Robert Berman Gallery, Los Angeles CA
1998 Predicament of the Hunt, Robert Berman Gallery, Los Angeles CA
1995 Company of Benevolent Freaks, Robert Berman Gallery, Los Angeles CA
1993 Heroes, Robert Berman Gallery, Los Angeles CA
Group Exhibitions
2017 Looking Back, 10 Years of Photography, Robert Berman Gallery, Los Angeles, California
2014 35 Years, Robert Berman Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
2012 ArtPad SF, Robert Berman Gallery, San Francisco CA
2004 25th Anniversary Show, Robert Berman Gallery, Los Angeles CA
2002 A Thousand Clowns, Robert Berman Gallery, Los Angeles CA
1999 California Drawin’, Robert Berman Gallery, Los Angeles CA
1998 Group Show, D-5 Gallery, Los Angeles CA