Maja Ruznic

b. 1983 Bosnia & Herzegovina / based in Placitas, NM

Maja Ruznic fuses personal narrative, psychoanalysis, mythology, and esoteric thought into vivid paintings that hybridize figuration and abstraction. Painting variably with oils and gouache on immense and small scales alike, she extracts order from layers of diluted pigment. Ruznic’s practice is informed by her studies, from Slavic shamanism and alchemy to Jungian psychoanalysis and sacred geometry. Imbued with a discordant beauty, her compositions emerge without a premeditated outcome. Ruznic’s introspective, mystical approach places her into a lineage of visionary painters including Paul Klee and Hilma af Klint.

Ruznic has held solo exhibitions at Contemporary Fine Arts, Berlin; Karma, New York, Los Angeles; Tamarind Institute and Harwood Museum of Art, Taos. Ruznic’s work is held in the collections of the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, California; Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, California; Dallas Museum of Art; EMMA—Espoo Museum of Modern Art, Espoo, Finland; Harwood Museum of Art, Taos; Jiménez–Colón Collection, Puerto Rico; Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris; Portland Art Museum, Oregon; Rachofsky House, Dallas; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; and the Whitney Museum of American Art.

Her work was recently on view in the Whitney Biennial 2024: Even Better Than the Real Thing and in the 12th International, Once Within a Time, at SITE SANTA FE, New Mexico, curated by Cecelia Almani.