Born: Washington D.C., 1972
Currently lives and works in New York, NY
Represented by: Tibor de Nagy Gallery in New York
Jen Mazza (born 1972, Washington D.C.) is a New York based artist who makes paintings and teaches at Parsons School of Design and the Pratt Institute. Her collaborative teaching integrates reading, artmaking and research across a range of disciplines, often focused on close visual analysis and problem-solving. She and her co-teacher, artist Dylan Gauthier have recently contributed a chapter to a forthcoming book “Teaching Artistic Research” (De Gruyter, ed. Ruth Mateus-Berr and Richard Jochum PhD MFA). And in another collaboration of word and image, selected paintings appear alongside poems by Sampson Starkweather in his newest chapbook “A Week in Late Capitalism / Ancient Capitalistic Proverbs” just released by Blush. Most recently Mazza’s work was on view in her now shuttered solo exhibition “Attending to Particulars” at Tibor de Nagy Gallery.
Mazza’s work engages with pre-existing images to develop, as Walter Benjamin writes in The Arcades Project, “the art of citing without quotation marks”. By allowing things to speak for themselves through the medium of paint, Mazza attempts to gently undermine or tilt habitual structures of seeing and meaning making, drawing out what is overlooked in our relationship to images and objects.
Significant awards include residencies at Yaddo (2005), the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts (2004, 2005, 2006), Blue Mountain Center (2006), and the Jentel Foundation (2004, 2008). Mazza was also granted a Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation Creative Fellowship to attend the Millay Colony in 2004 and returned again to the Colony in 2013. In 2001 and 2008, the artist received Individual Artist Fellowships from the New Jersey State Council for the Arts, and in 2008 she was selected to be Artist in Residence at the Newark Museum. Her painting was the subject of an exhibition at the Jersey City Museum (2010), and her work is in the permanent collection of the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum at Michigan State University.
Mazza received her B.A. in Visual Art and Spanish Literature from Mary Washington College in Fredericksburg, Virginia (1994), and an M.F.A. in Visual Art from Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University (2001). Her work has been reviewed in the New York Times, Art in America, Art News, Art 21 and Hyperallergic. She is represented by Tibor de Nagy in New York.
CV
Education
1999-2001 Master of Fine Arts in Visual Art, Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ
Solo Exhibitions
2020
Tibor de Nagy Gallery, Attending to Particulars, New York, NY
2019
C.G.Boerner, No Subjects Where None Intended, New York, NY
2018
James Gallery at the Graduate Center, CUNY, Disobedience is not careless, New York, NY
2015
Tibor de Nagy Gallery, \ /\/\/\/\/\ /\\\\\\\\\///////////\ A Painting is a Machine, New York, NY
2014
Tibor de Nagy Gallery, Graft, New York, NY
2012
Stephan Stoyanov Gallery, The Words, New York, NY
2010
Jersey City Museum, Self Deceit, 1 x 1 series, Jersey City, NJ
John Davis Gallery, Carriage House, The Object Removed, Hudson, NY
2008
Mariboe Art Gallery, Peddie School, Delie, Hightstown, N.J
2007
John Davis Gallery, New Paintings, Hudson, NY
Tomasulo Gallery, Scarlet Intent, Union County College, Cranford, NJ
2006
John Davis Gallery, Carriage House, Paintings, Hudson, NY
2002
PS122, Auricle, New York, NY
Selected Group Exhibitions
2020
Artist Alliance Inc., A Light Without Shadow, (virtual) NY
2017
Jane Lombard Gallery, Sites of Knowledge, NY
Knockdown Art Center, Unseen Hand, Brooklyn, NY
Tibor de Nagy Gallery, Correspondences, NY
2016
Barbara Walters Gallery, Sarah Lawrence College, Flat Screen, Split Screen, Smoke Screen, Bronxville, NY
Rockefeller Bros. Fund, Residency Unlimited Artists, NY
2013
Frosch & Portman, Take Note, New York, NY
The Hole, Summer Reading, New York, NY
Gavlak Gallery, All F@*#ing Summer, FLA
2011
Galerie Edgar Frei /Project Madonna-Fust, Komposition des Zufalls, Bern, Switzerland
York College Art Gallery, The B-Sides, Jamaica, NY
2009
Cuchifritos Gallery, Feedback – Working Space ‘09, curated by Thomas Lax, NY
Paul Robeson Gallery, Rutgers University, Hysteria, Past yet Present, Newark, NJ
Spruill Center for the Arts, Go Figure, Contemporary Interpretations of Figurative Art, GA
2008
Jersey City Museum, The Feminine Mystique, curated by Rocío Aranda-Alvarado, Jersey City, NJ
Awards
2013
Millay Colony for the Arts, Residency
2008
Newark Museum, Artist in Residency
New Jersey State Council on the Arts, Individual Artist Fellowship
Artist Alliance Inc. Lower East Side Rotating Studio Program, Studio Award
The Jentel Foundation, Residency
2007
PS122, Project Space Award 2006-2007
2006
Blue Mountain Center, Residency
Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, 2004/2005/2006, Geraldine R. Dodge Residency
2005
Yaddo, Geraldine R. Dodge Residency
2004
The Jentel Foundation, Residency
Millay Colony for the Arts, Residency
Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation, Creative Fellowship
2002
Aljira Center for Contemporary Art, Emerge 2003 Artist Fellowship
New Jersey State Council on the Arts, Individual Artist Fellowship
Writings/Texts
2019 “Like Driving at Night: A Process-Based, Learner-Centered Approach to Teaching Artistic Research Across Disciplines” (written in collaboration with social practice artist Dylan Gauthier) in the forthcoming book “Teaching Artistic Research” (De Gruyter, ed. Ruth Mateus-Berr and Richard Jochum PhD MFA).
2019 “A Week in Late Capitalism / Ancient Capitalistic Proverbs”(Blush) a chapbook written by poet Sampson Starkweather with images by Jen Mazza.
2016 “Ill Said Ill Seen: a Meditation on Robert Ryman and Samuel Beckett” (The Finch, online journal)
2015 “Shudder/Shutter: Signal to Noise” and “A Dialog of Three Disciplines” (The Finch, online journal)
Artist Talks, Panels and Presentations
2021
The Getty Museum, Artist Talk
2018
The James Gallery at The Center for the Humanities:
—”Painting as Translation”, Artist talk and Conversation with writer Eric Dean Wilson, CUNY, NY
—”Words do not pass, they accumulate”, Reading and conversation with poets Zachary Pace, Bridget Talone and Simone White, CUNY, NY
Pratt Institute, Fine Arts Faculty Lunch Talk
2011
Aljira Center for Contemporary Art, Artist Talk
2010
Jersey City Museum, Artist Talk
2009
Paul Robeson Gallery, Rutgers University, Artist Talk
Rutgers University, Visiting Artist
2008
Newark Museum, Artist Talk
New Jersey State Council for the Arts, 2008 Artist Roundtable Panelist, Grants and Funding Panel Discussion
Peddie School, Artist Talk and Visiting Artist
Selected Bibliography
- Dan Bischoff, “Framing realism into fragments: Rising Newark artist Jennifer Mazza depicts sex and violence… irony and humor,” The New Jersey Star Ledger, April 24, 2008
- Dan Bischoff, “Jen Mazza writes ‘the new book’ on art”, by Dan Bischoff, The New Jersey Star Ledger, September 9, 2012
- Brendan Carroll, “Reading beyond the page”, Hyperallergic, September 11, 2012
- Elwyn Palmerton, “Jen Mazza at Stephan Stoyanov Gallery”, review, Artillery Magazine, vol 7 issue 2: November/December 2012
- Ali Pechman, “Kathy Butterly and Jen Mazza”, review, Art News, May 2014
- Roberta Smith, “Upstairs and Behind Doors, Creative Passion”, The New York Times, April 3, 2014
- Zachary Sachs, “Sites of Knowledge,” review, June 30, 2017
- John Yau, “Summer Carousing and Revelry”, review, Hyperallergic, July 3, 2016