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Marisa Adesman (b. 1991, Roslyn, NY) received her MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, RI in 2018 and her BFA from Washington University, St. Louis, MO in 2013. Adesman had her first museum solo exhibition, The Birth of Flowers, at KMAC Contemporary Art Museum, Louisville, KY in 2023. She has exhibited work widely including at the Contemporary Art Museum (CAM), St. Louis, MO; Black Mountain College Museum, Ashville, NC; Mead Art Museum, Amherst College; Amherst, MA; Anat Ebgi, Los Angeles / New York; and Mrs. Gallery, Queens, NY. Adesman’s work is in public collections including Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, San Diego, CA; Deji Museum, Nanjing, China; and Museo d’Arte Moderna di Bologna (MAMbo), Bologna, Italy. Adesman lives and works in Chicago, IL.
Marisa Adesman’s surreal and thought-provoking paintings often depict ordinary objects in bizarre contexts and striking states of mystical transformation. She composes tableware, candles, houseplants, flowers, linens, kitchen utensils, and furniture into strange and unusual arrangements that destabilize our notions about the proper order of a house and home. These settings are often centered around the female form and are guided by Adesman’s visionary poetics of interior space. She examines the art historical meaning of the female figure as a pliable body designed for amorous desire and protection, but also sinister and capable of deception and corruption. Adesman’s compositions mingle ethereal and phantasmagoric imagery of the surrealist period with Dutch still life and vanitas paintings from 16th and 17th century Europe. Likewise, she retains all the attendant technical mastery which defined those artistic styles. Smooth and luminous surfaces combined with a masterful use of chiaroscuro, the skillful contrastingof extreme light and dark, reveals the hand of a remarkably detailed painter whose work demands to be viewed in person.
