Marin Majić

Brooklyn-based artist Marin Majić creates small, atmospheric paintings with iridescent surfaces. The Frankfurt-born Croatian artist layers colored pencil, wax, oil paint, and marble dust to build these luminous fields. Marble dust is employed almost sculpturally, giving the appearance of the traditional metalwork and enamel technique of cloisonné.

"Marin Majić’s discodisco is an exhibition of intimately scaled paintings of discotheques, landscapes, and the charged middle ground between them. Expanding on the nocturnal vocabulary of his 2023 exhibition Nocturnes, where the show felt like wandering alone through a dreamscape, discodisco puts bodies in the room. Dancers, animals, and suited figures populate these canvases, all of them caught dancing, gazing, or suspended in stasis, gestures pointed away from what comes next. Their soft, scratchy, muted palette of greens, greys, and oranges oscillates with a surrealist sensibility while nodding toward the English Romanticists. The scale insists on intimacy in a moment of overwhelming spectacle."

Layers of colored pencil and marble dust worked into an oil-like substance flood the linen planes on which Marin Majic works. The Brooklyn-based artist builds upon a foundational drawing, blending various media into a richly textured surface resembling fabric or plaster. Matte finishes radiate across the scenes, appearing like magical glimmers under a night sky

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These dreamy paintings made with oil paint, colored pencils, and marble dust on linen are bursting with magical qualities. A strong sense of light dominates each work, and you’re left wondering what is happening in this visual version of magical realism. My only complaint is that the details and moody qualities of the paintings are lost in this well-lit gallery. Each work feels like an ephemeral universe flickering before our eyes. —HV

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"Most paintings have an autobiographical core," Majic told Juxtapoz about the connecting theme between the works in his debut with the gallery. "There is no predetermined arch for this group of works but prior work inspires new work as an ongoing conversation." Such continuing effect of the works' narrative comes to light with a harmonious display in which the small-scale snapshots are creating a linear storyline that skips from lush rainforest-like scenes over domestic settings, to the portrayal of inconspicuous subjects. 

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