Maria Kozak -- A Bad Case of the Stripes

Maria Kozak
A Bad Case of the Stripes, 2025
Oil on jute
15 x 12 in.

Warsaw and New York-based artist Maria Kozak’s (b. 1981, Krakow, PL) psychological portraits and landscapes allude to an undercurrent of energy coursing through human existence. A descendant of dowsers, alchemists and Polish mystics, her fluid, moody paintings are driven by existential inquiries into the nature of reality and the construction of society. Kozak's paintings are characterized by dissolving forms, layered narratives and ambiguity that carry forth traditions from German Expressionism, Surrealism, Psychedelia and the Transavantgarde.

In 'A Bad Case of the Stripes',a young man peers through a striped curtain spanning the entire picture plane, seemingly pushing through the painting itself and staring out, half-hidden from a waiting world. Capturing the precarity of liminality and the sheer strangeness of being in-between, Kozak materializes the disorientation of the precipice.

Maria Kozak lives and works between New York City, Upstate New York and Warsaw, Poland. Her family emigrated to the United States from Poland in 1983 at the height of martial law and she grew up navigating the two cultures. Kozak holds an MFA in painting from the New York Academy of Art and is an alumni of NEW INC, the New Museum’s incubator for art + technology. She has shown most recently at Boketto (Monaco), LETO Gallery (Warsaw), Yudian (Hangzhou) with Dreamsong at NADA Villa Warsaw and at The Detroit Public Library. Kozak was awarded a NYFA/NYSCA Grant and a Schusterman Foundation Fellowship for her work in emerging technology. Kozak has been featured in Surface Magazine, Cool Hunting, Artsy, FAD Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, Architectural Digest and Paper magazine.