ABOUT
Joan Reutershan received her BFA summa cum laude in 2017 from Hunter College, City University of New York, where she was a Kossak Painting Fellow. She earned an MA Degree in Art History, also from Hunter, CUNY. Selected solo exhibitions include High Low Crow Go at @studioninedee, BKNY Street View at One River School of Art and Design, BKNY Street View II at Mariboe Gallery/ Swig Arts Center and New York at Eye Level in the Main Gallery, Florida School of the Arts. A museum group exhibition entitled Vision at the Danville Museum of Fine Art and History included her work. She frequently participates in group exhibitions in and around NYC: Recent venues include Lichtundfire on the Lower East Side, NYC Crit Club Canopy Gallery in Chelsea, Plant 486 in Brooklyn, 5-50 Gallery and The Factory in Long Island City. Reutershan enjoys artist residencies (Berlin Art Institute, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Vermont Studio Center, Woodstock Byrdcliffe Guild, Cha North,). She is grateful to her community of artist run organizations--New York City Crit Club, Paradice Palase, Odetta Digital, and Shoestring Press.
BIO
My cityscape paintings present fragmented urban iconography and snarky fluorescent color. Each painting idea originates IRL in a shocking pop of color found among the urban grays. The painting process begins with an overall silver silkscreen pattern, which I associate with the ubiquitous, seductive influence of the digital world on the contemporary landscape and psyche. Acrylic paint, found objects and glittery down-market plastics fight back with their resolute materiality. Collage and assemblage objects extend my work out from the surface into low relief, and off the stretched canvas onto the wall. My cityscape imagery draws from the street and sidewalk—from graffiti, connective urban design, and detritus. Visual allegiances range from high modernism to memes.
Making art is a form of epistemology for me, it is a way I explore the 21st Century urban environment--an edgy cauldron of discrepancies, but also of transformation. If the downtown Brooklyn sky is colonized by big real estate, “on the ground” there is alternative world building in which I actively participate, and which I consider research for my art work. The funky jumble of my painting disrupts the traditional representation of the urban landscape as a vertical stacking of ground, architecture and sky planes. I replace and queer this genre convention with an incongruous mixed-media assemblage, proposing the cityscape as an open field of possibilities--baffling, energetic and inclusive.
STATEMENT
Solo Exhibitions
2021 HighLowCrowGo!, curated by Karen Rosenkrantz, Studio 9D, New York, NY
2020 BKNY Street View Redux, curated by Joyce Chen, Mariboe Gallery at Swig Arts Center, Hightstown, NJ
BKNY Street View, curated by Cassandra Basile, Gallery at One River School of Art and Design, Woodbury, LI, NY
2011 Peripheral Vision: New York City Paintings, Main Gallery at Port Washington Public Library, Port Washington, NY
2010 Vertical Terrain: New York City Paintings, Grace Institute Gallery, New York, NY
2009 New York at Eye Level: Paintings and Photographs, Florida School of the Arts Main Gallery, Palatka, FL
2008 Chromatic New York, Watchung Arts Center, Watchung, NJ
2007 Adjacencies: Cityscapes of Brooklyn and Manhattan, Art at First, New York, NY
2005 Arrangements: Paintings of Brooklyn and Manhattan, Gallery Three at A.R.T. New York,, Brooklyn, NY
Selected Group + Three-person Exhibitions
2025 Lichtundfire Gallery, Bohemian Rhapsody, curated by Priska Juschka, New York, NY
Pinwheel: An Eclectic Group Show, curated by John Holt, Incubator Studio Gallery, Brooklyn, NY
LGBTQ+ Experiences Then and Now, curated by Mark Fontaine, Great Hall Gallery, New York, NY
2024 Hungry Strangers, curated by artists and mentor Yevgeniya Baras, NYC Crit Club Canopy Studio, New York, NY
Minimal Maximal, curated by Priska Juschka, LichtundFire Gallery, New York, NY
Dark Sky Land, curated by Marisela LaGrave and Miranda Howe, Bone Springs Art Space, Roswell, NM
Depth Charge, curated by Dave Jacobs, Plant 486 Gallery, Brooklyn, NY
Who’s afraid of Red Yellow and Blue?, curated by Ellen Fagan, The Factory, Long Island City, NY
BQE: An Iconography of Queens, curated by Yvette Hidalgo, The Factory, Long Island City, NY
2023 Abstraction, Layers and Perception, Riverside Gallery, Three-person exhibition with Joyce Pommer and Sabrina Puppin, curated by Chunbum Park, Hackensack, NJ
Visions, curated by Tina Cornely, Danville Museum of Fine Arts and History, Danville, VA
Exquisite Codes Berlin, curated by Ellen Hackl Fagan, KolonieWedding Bla-BlaProjektraum, Berlin, Germany
2022. Marked! Protect Tree Canopy in Fort Greene Park, public installation, created for Friends of Fort Greene Park, Brooklyn, NY
Omen Amen, curated by Kiera Stuart, Box Factory Gallery, Ridgewood, Queens, NY
Serious Play (Summer 2022) Spinning Plates (Winter 2022), curated by Ellen Hackl Fagan, Odetta Digital Gallery, on Artsy.net with SHIM Art Network
MaterialX, Three-person exhibition with Lauren Packard and Qinza Nahm, curated by Hilary Doyle and Catherine Haggarty, 5-50 Gallery, Long Island City, NY
Feminist Praxis, Office Space Gallery SLC at Art Fair 14C, curated by Albert Abdul-Barr Wang and Bryce Chatwin, The Glass Gallery at Mana Contemporary, Jersey City, NJ
2020 Group Show Open Call (online) Exhibition Room 5, SHRINE Gallery, New York, NY
2017 Hunter College BFA Degree Exhibition, Leubsdorf Gallery, curated by Carrie Moyer, New York, NY
2016 Printfest, International Print Center, New York, NY
2013 Diptych, Triptych and Multiples, curated by Shira Toren, City Without Walls [cWOW] Gallery, Newark, NJ
The Urban Situation, curated by John Baber, Ernest Rubenstein Gallery, New York, NY
2010 Urbanessence, curated by Jennifer Mitchell, Gallery 61, New York Institute of Technology, New York, NY
Awards / Grants / Residencies
2023 Berlin Art Institute, Berlin, Germany, Artist Residency
2021 Byrdcliffe Art Colony, Woodstock, NY, Artist Residency
2020 Guest Artist, Mariboe Art Gallery, Hightstown, NJ
2019 Vermont Studio Center Full Fellowship, Johnson, VT, Artist Residency
Virginia Center for the Creative Arts Fellowship, Amherst, VA, Artist Residency
2018 Byrdcliffe Art Colony, Woodstock, NY, Artist Residency
2017 Departmental Honors in Fine Arts, Hunter College Department of Art and Art History, New York, NY
Presidential Graduation Award, Hunter College, New York, NY
2015-17 Kossak Painting Fellow, Hunter College Department of Art and Art History, New York, NY
2012 chaNorth at Spruce Farm, Pine Plains, NY, Artist Residency
2009 Oberpfaelzer Kuenstlerhaus, Schwandorf, Germany, Artist Residency
2007, 2005 Virginia Center for the Creative Arts Fellowship, Artist Residency
2005 Award of Excellence, Manhattan Arts International Small Works Competition
2003 Marchutz School Fellowship, Aix-en-Provence, France
Press, Interviews, Artist Talks, & Writing
2025 Review of Reutershan collage painting by Audra Lambert, ANTE magazine
2024 Interview Joan Reutershan with Michael Alvarez, Bold Journey magazine
2023 Artist talk with curator and co-director Kat Ryals of Paradice Palase on Instagram Live (October 18, 2023)
2022 Emerging Artists Collective, Interview—Joan Reutershan (August 2022)
Artist talk with curator and educator Joyce Chen, Mariboe Art Gallery, Hightstown, New Jersey, in conjunction with the exhibition BKNY Street View 2
Artist talk with Gallery Director Cassandra Basile, One River School of Art and Design, Woodbury New York, in conjunction with the exhibition BKNY Street View
2021 Preparing for Open Studios at Byrdcliffe in Woodstock, Daily Freeman, Kingston ,NY, July 13, 2021, updated July 24, 2021.
2020 Solo Exhibition at Woodbury Gallery, Syosset Advance (Garden City, NY), February 26, 2020.
2019 Adelman, James and Oscar Buitrago, introduction to RELIEF: Byrdcliffe Artists-in-Residence 2018, exhibition catalog, April-May, images p16.
2017 Beattie, Drew, catalog essay for Concurrency, Hunter College BFA Degree Exhibition, City University of New York, exhibition catalog, June 2017, np.
2013 Bischoff, Dan, Over and Over: Review of Diptych, Triptych and Multiples at cWOW Gallery, The Sunday Star-Ledger (Newark), NJ, March 10, 2013, Section IV, 6.
#166: Flatbush Ave/ Bergen St (Brooklyn), oil on canvas, 30 x 24 in., 2008, reproduced in Roth, Robert and Carletta Joy Walker, eds And Then, Vol. 17, 2013, 85.
Co-curated with William C. Agee et al., Sanford Wurmfeld: Color Visions 1966-2013, Hunter College Times Square Gallery, New York, NY, 2013; Catalog essay “From Gravity to Levity:
Sanford Wurmfeld’s Recent Watercolor Paintings” in Sanford Wurmfeld: Color Visions 1966-2013, exhibition catalog (New York: Hunter College Times Square Gallery, 2013), 124-130.
2011 AAC Welcomes Joan Reutershan, The Port Washington Public Library, No. 270, October 2011.
Horner, James, A Diverse Look at Urban Life: Review of “The Urban Situation,’ Ernest Rubenstein Gallery at the Educational Alliance, Manhattan Fine Arts Examiner, February 21.
2009 Biederer, Franziska, Stadt der vielen Pasteltone, Die Rundschau Schwandorf, August 2.
Poscharsky-Ziegler, Anastasia, New Yorker Wolkenkratzer in der Oberpfalz, Der Neue Tag, July 25.
2008 Doane, Naomi, ed., ‘“Evening Reflections” by Joan Reutershan,’ cover image, Fort Greene Newsletter, November.
2007 “Emerging Artists” Closes Flinn’s Season, Greenwich Citizen, May 4.
2006 Harvey, Phillip, Profile: Third Wave Artists in their own Words, Nat Creole Magazine, No3, Nov/Dec.
BAC Gallery Presents Third Wave: The Planet of Brooklyn Transitions, October.
Hartenstein, S., A Sneak Peek into an Urban Landscape, The Wave, Feb 17.
Collections
Kentler International Drawing Space, Brooklyn, NY: Paintings #28 and #29 in Remarked Upon Book by Robin Ross
Grace Institute, New York, NY
Private Collections in the US and Germany
Art Education
2024 NYC Crit Club Canopy Program, New York, NY
2017 BFA in Studio Art summa cum laude, Hunter College, City University of New York, New York, NY
2015-17 Kossak Painting Fellow Hunter College, New York, NY
2014 MA in Art History, Hunter College, CUNY, New York, NY
Thesis: Richard Diebenkorn and Current Conversations on Abstract Painting
Memberships
NYC Crit Club
Long Island City Artists Association
College Art Association
Robert Blackburn Print Studio