Maria Kozak Polish, b. 1981
Works
Chasing Ghosts , 2026
Biography
Portrait of Maria Kozak in her studio © Rafal Wielgus
Maria Kozak (b. 1981, Poland) is a multidisciplinary artist who lives and works between upstate New York and Warsaw, Poland. She holds a Master’s degree in Painting from the New York Academy of Art and is an alumna of NEW INC, the New Museum’s incubator for art and technology.
Through drawing and painting, Kozak creates intuitive, psychological landscapes populated by enigmatic figures that explore relationships between the self, others and the sublime. Combining digital processes with traditional painting techniques, she develops layered compositions that move between abstraction and figuration, familiarity and mystery. Drawing on Surrealism, German Expressionism, psychedelia and the Transavanguardia, her work reflects on the nature of reality, human experience and the structures that shape society.
Her work has been exhibited at the Detroit Public Library. She is a recipient of a NYFA/NYSCA Grant and a Schusterman Foundation Fellowship for her work in emerging technology, and is also Editor-at-Large of Przekrój, Poland’s oldest cultural magazine.
Exhibitions
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Zurich – Read These Leaves
Maria Kozak 17 Sep - 14 Nov 2026Maria Kozak's exhibition takes its title from her favorite passage of Leaves of Grass, in which Walt Whitman offers a philosophy for living as an embodied practice of openness, curiosity,...Read more -
Zurich – The Roles We Play
Group Show 29 Apr - 6 Jun 2026Through painting, drawing and photography, the artists brought together in The Roles We Play explore how identity is shaped through a series of positions, whether social, cultural, relational or internal....Read more
Installation shots
Press
