Marlena Urban
Bio
Marlena Urban is an MFA student at Brooklyn College and lives on Long Island, NY. They mainly work two-dimensional in drawing and painting, along with some multimedia, printmaking, and sculpture.
Marlena Urban is an artist working on Long Island, NY. They were born in Kings Park, New York, and reside there today. Currently, they are obtaining a Master of Fine Arts Degree at Brooklyn College with a concentration in Painting and Drawing. Marlena is a Teacher Assistant in one of Brooklyn College’s undergraduate Painting I courses. Their career goal is to teach art to students in higher-level education. In their undergraduate studies, Marlena graduated from Suffolk County Community College with an associate's degree in Visual Arts in 2019 and from Stony Brook University with a bachelor's degree in Studio Art (summa cum laude) in 2021. During their studies, Marlena received mentorship from the distinguished professor Howardena Pindell and held their first solo exhibition in Stony Brook’s art gallery. Their most recent work in exhibitions includes The Creative Spirit and the 2022 Member’s Showcase at The Art Guild. Marlena’s occupations include managing the Public Relations and Gallery Assistant for The Art Guild of Port Washington and supervising a CVS chain in Smithtown.
In their recent work, they focused on the intrinsic desire to define identity and how the multiplicity of identity can carry infinite labels. They associate finding small defining traits about identity in fragments from their experiences that they piece together. By paying close attention to isolated images from their life and removing them from their broader context, the subjects in their paintings are a stand-in for the condition of multiplicity, questioning their pre-existing importance. They do this by creating a tunnel vision of the scene by blocking out the bigger picture entirely. A subject’s multiplicity is emulated through expressive colors and brushwork as the idea of the ‘other’ self is explored through the use of its shadow.
Artist Statement
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My work reflects a direct response to my personal life and the condition of living. By extracting specific moments from my life, I meditate on their relation to my life and how they contribute to character building. I have questioned the importance of identifying traits of the self and whether labeling is beneficial to the human condition. My art is a direct visual response to my alternating answers to questions about identity. I am fascinated by the double-edged sword of labels and how they can sometimes be beneficial or harmful to the individual. I am intrigued by the subjectivity of an initial thought and how that skews perceptions. I highlight the inherited stigma of judgment and encourage my viewers not to draw conclusions based on the initial perception of one’s physical characteristics.
The technical information in my work includes thickly layering paint, drawing materials, and sculpture as a visual irony toward the desire to uncover the answers and truth of identity. It is as if by trying to chip away at the question of ‘who am I?’ Questions build on indefinitely as more conclusions are drawn. The more specific the question becomes, such as asking “Why?” the less possible and satisfying it becomes to conclude. I am heavily inspired by the psychological phenomenon of the multiplicities of identity and use portraiture in ways that confront the truths of my subject matter. Just how much of my subjects do I know? Will I ever fully know anything about the individual, myself, even? And just how important is it to fully satisfy that desire to know the self? I question if the victory of knowledge affects the bigger picture of what it means to live.