Spotlight — Ryan Mrozowski

The Spotlight series includes a new or never-before-exhibited artwork paired with a commissioned piece of writing, creating focused and thoughtful conversations between the visual arts and authors, critics, poets, peers, scholars, and beyond. In this iteration, the Spotlight features Ryan Mrozowski ’s Untitled (Split Quartet), 2026. A text by curator Courtenay Finn accompanies the presentation.

Fourfold: A Quartet for Ryan Mrozowski

By Courtenay Finn

Fourfold. Four dance moves, choreographies through time and space. Four ways to pose the question, what does it mean to stay attuned to a pluralistic world? Four propositions for a painting.

A painting as a cynosure. Can a painting be a north star, a center of attraction or attention, and can this be a form of navigation? A guide of sorts? If in the past the philosopher was the one who operated as our mediator, interpreter, and arbiter, can this role today be occupied by a painting?

Imagine a conversation between four Mark Rothko paintings. Untitled (1957), which resides currently at the Menil Collection in Houston, the canvas full of bright and deep reds, blocks of color that sway, vibrating like a story stumbling excitedly out of one’s mouth. White Center (1957), whose home is the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, a composition of washy reds and oranges, fading in and out of the light, a center band of white holding the flow of conversation steady. No.73 (1952) at the High Museum in Atlanta, a bar of expressive yellow radiating above an orange ground, a purple band pushing forward, edging in with questions, asking for more details. And last, but by no means, least, No. 37/No. 19 (Slate Blue and Brown on Plum) (1958), who holds court at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, a serious muted set of burgundy, grey and brown, holding the conversation to task, reminding us of the weight of language.

The Hagen Quartet’s interpretation of Beethoven’s String Quartet No.14 in C-sharp Minor, Op. 131 starts softly, but with a firm presence. It builds, tenderly declarative, knowing the weight of the journey it embarks upon—like a solitary figure returning home from the end of the world. Built from d ivergent harmonic directions and vastly different time scales within each, the composition leaves itself open to experimental interpretation, inviting musicians in, asking for it to be completed together, built upon, expanded outward. Upon hearing String Quartet No.14 in C-sharp Minor, Op. 131 performed for the first time,composer Franz Schubert apparently exclaimed, “After this, what is left for us to write?”

About the artist

Ryan Mrozowski (b. 1981, Indiana, PA) is an artist living and working between Hudson, NY, and Brooklyn, NY. Mrozowzki's immersive language, which is rooted in visual and linguistic puzzles, frequently uses botanical subjects to explore elements of presence, absence, and perception. Foliage, fruit, and letters become abstracted in Mrozowski’s compositions, as the artist crops and repeats his motifs. The resulting lyrical patterning disrupts the traditional still-life and often reimagines nature with methodical order. Mrozowski earned his MFA from Pratt Institute, New York, NY, in 2005, and his BFA from the Indiana University of Pennsylvania, Indiana, PA, in 2003. His work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at international venues including i8 Gallery, Reykjavik, Iceland; Galerie Nordenhake, Berlin, Germany, Stockholm, Sweden, and Mexico City, Mexico; Perrotin, Shanghai, China; Ratio 3, San Francisco, CA; Chapter, New York, NY; Simon Lee Gallery, London, England; Hannah Hoffman Gallery, Los Angeles, CA; and Arcade, London, England.