MARINA LEVIT
ork
Marina Levit (b.
2001, winnipeg, mb) is a painter based in so-called vancouver, bc. They
received a BFA from Emily Carr University of Art and Design in 2024.
Flickering between figuration and abstraction, their oil paintings explore micro narratives of their everyday, through play and the cultivation of mark making and colour. Their work often reflects the awkwardness and complexities of the self and life’s mundanities, as they seek to unravel ways of seeing through questioning how to simplify, complicate, contradict, and queer the forms present in their work. Their paintings are generated by an interaction of opacities and transparencies, dimension and flatness, colour and form, and the play between visual directness and ambiguity. The subject matter is constantly pushing up against the visceral experience of paint and colour as material. In this way, their paintings toy between restraint and release- the ambiguities and indeterminacies that arise from this serve to reject a presumed stagnancy of identity and the rigidity of social structures. Their work exists in a state of questioning as a manner of being, rather than a means to an end.
Moments of ambiguity in their paintings can be characterized as a form of queering. Queerness can be reframed beyond sexuality and gender, but as a mode of existing in this world that is strange, fluid, ambiguous, reinventive, contradictory, multifaceted, translucent, opaque, and in full colour. Queer formalisms manifest in their paintings through their reimagining of space and perspective, their insistence on full colour, and the openness of brushstroke. Colour serves as a distinctive subject matter in their work, as they remain in constant conversation with colour as material in their process. They question when to deliver the pleasure of boisterous, noisy high chroma encounters, and when to find a more subtle, withheld, and nuanced relationship to colour. Through the activation of colour and form, their paintings explore the everyday in order to gesture towards a queer elsewhere within the minutiae.
Flickering between figuration and abstraction, their oil paintings explore micro narratives of their everyday, through play and the cultivation of mark making and colour. Their work often reflects the awkwardness and complexities of the self and life’s mundanities, as they seek to unravel ways of seeing through questioning how to simplify, complicate, contradict, and queer the forms present in their work. Their paintings are generated by an interaction of opacities and transparencies, dimension and flatness, colour and form, and the play between visual directness and ambiguity. The subject matter is constantly pushing up against the visceral experience of paint and colour as material. In this way, their paintings toy between restraint and release- the ambiguities and indeterminacies that arise from this serve to reject a presumed stagnancy of identity and the rigidity of social structures. Their work exists in a state of questioning as a manner of being, rather than a means to an end.
Moments of ambiguity in their paintings can be characterized as a form of queering. Queerness can be reframed beyond sexuality and gender, but as a mode of existing in this world that is strange, fluid, ambiguous, reinventive, contradictory, multifaceted, translucent, opaque, and in full colour. Queer formalisms manifest in their paintings through their reimagining of space and perspective, their insistence on full colour, and the openness of brushstroke. Colour serves as a distinctive subject matter in their work, as they remain in constant conversation with colour as material in their process. They question when to deliver the pleasure of boisterous, noisy high chroma encounters, and when to find a more subtle, withheld, and nuanced relationship to colour. Through the activation of colour and form, their paintings explore the everyday in order to gesture towards a queer elsewhere within the minutiae.
Solo Exhibtions
2
Group Exhibtions
2023
2021
2
Fields, Access Gallery, Vancouver BC (Curated by Dana Belcourt)
Garden, Michael O’Brian Exhibition Commons, Emily Carr University of Art + Design, Vancouver, BC (Curated by Danya Gorodetsky, Elise Gerhards, and Marina Levit)
Keepsake Site, The Object Corner, Vancouver, BC
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I, in another way, Michael O’Brian Exhibition Commons, Emily Carr University of Art + Design, Vancouver, BC (Curated by Jade Sawotin and Marina Levit)
The Liveliness of Drawing, First Floor Gallery Space of Emily Carr University of Art + Design, Vancouver, BC (Curated by Sara-Jeanne Bourget and Ingrid Koenig)
The Not an Exhibtion Show, The Neighbourhood Gallery, Vancouver, BC (Curated by Elise Gerhards, Yeboji, and Marina Levit)
Self Portrait Exhibtion, The Neighbourhood Gallery, Vancouver, BC (curated by Jenny Chen, Kesley Steeves, Shiva Khaefpanah)
VIBGYOR, The Neighbourhood Gallery, Vancouver, BC (curated by Jenny Chen, Kesley Steeves, Shiva Khaefpanah)
Reel Pride Art Show 2021, Gas Station Theatre, Winnipeg, MB
Work
- Contract work, preparator in gallery deinstallation and installation.
Co-Curator and Gallery Coordinator, The Neighbourhood Gallery (Vancouver) | 2023-2024
- Curation and administrative coordination for The Neighbourhood Gallery, a student-run visual art exhibition space for Emily Carr University students
- Preformed call outs, promotion, gallery installation / deinstallation, and event planning
Artist Assistant to Landon Mackenzie (Vancouver) | December 2023 & January 2024
- Hired to assistance painter Landon Mackenzie to do prep work of unboxing, re-stretching / shipping paintings.
Research Assistant, Emily Carr University (Vancouver) / May - September 2023
- Research assistant for media scholar and curator Alla Gadassik
- Researched pigment histories, as well as created paint-on-glass animation as a form of research
Art Teacher, Artful Owl (Winnipeg) | April - August 2022
- Art teacher for groups of around 10 children, ages 5 and up. Led art classes and art day camps
Contact
Instagram: @marinalevit.art
Email: mtlevit@gmail.com