Zone
Maya Hayuk
In the Main Space
Brooklyn artist Maya Hayuk spent the summer in residence at the Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture, emerged in August full of new energy and ideas, and immediately set to work creating four installations at SPACE amid our summer renovation project. Hyperallergic’s Howard Hurst wrote of Maya’s work, “Her dizzying, weird, and often psychedelic paintings are all about good vibes. The first time I saw her work at Cinders Gallery it felt like I was getting shot in the face with a laser full of happiness.” Blending deep blacks and florescent colors, her paintings toy with symmetry and opacity, mixing hard brush lines with softer wafts of color.
About the artist:
Maya Hayuk is a first-generation Ukrainian-American muralist, painter, photographer, printmaker, musician and Barnstormer who maintains a full time, independent studio practice in Brooklyn, New York by way of San Francisco, Baltimore, Boston and Toronto. From her large-scale murals to small works on paper, her obsession with symmetry and nourishing color play out in what might be views from the Hubble Telescope, airbrushed nail art, Mexican woven blankets, Ukrainian Easter eggs, chandeliers, mandalas, Rorschach tests and/or holograms. Embracing both sexuality and spirituality via symbolism evocative of radiantly woven geometries to the beckoning parted orifices of the body, her work evokes the process towards continuity and wholeness whose forces seem bent on maintaining the triumph of this love over evil.
Along with her solo work, Hayuk frequently collaborates with other artists and musicians. She’s made album covers, posters, tee shirts, photographs, videos, video footage, murals and stage sets for Rye Rye/ M.I.A, The Akron Family, TV on the Radio, Devendra Banhardt, Prefuse 73, Awesome Color, Oakley Hall, Home, Animal Collective and The Beastie Boys, amongst others. In October 2008, she created her first sensory deprivation sound experiment inside a pitch black shipping container called EVERYWHERE IS NOWHERE EVERYWHERE. In March 2009, she was commissioned to create a massive outdoor sculpture for the Scope Art Fair, which she realized in collaboration with Ben Wolf. Her most recent solo shows include HEAVY LIGHT at Cinders Gallery, FEELING SPACE, at Gallery 16 in San Francisco, A PATH FOR THE LIGHT, at ALICE gallery in Brussels. In March, 2010 she launched her show, ULTRA, ULTRA DEEP FIELDS at the MU non-profit art space, in Eindhoven, Netherlands and produced a series of screen prints with Pictures On Walls in London, UK. In April 2010, she traveled to Beijing, China, where she created several massive mural commissions and in August, 2010 created an on-site painted installation in The Museum of Light and Sound in Sao Paolo, Brazil. Maya has been organizing THIS WALL COULD BE YOUR LIFE, an on-going mural project since 2005 on the exterior walls of the now legendary Monster Island/ Secret Project Robot in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
