Marika Thunder: Texas / Yeshiva

January 11th, 2023

Nina Johnson, Marika Thunder, Painting, Exhibition, Yeshiva, Texas — Marika Thunder, Texas Street Parade (Pirate Bay), 2022, Oil on wood panel, 31.5 x 41.5 in. (Framed)

Marika Thunder’s latest solo exhibition Texas / Yeshiva opens today at Nina Johnson in Miami. Born in New York City, Thunder spent formative years living in Texas, California, Pennsylvania, and even Hungary, her mother’s native country. Each location created a split in her identity that she incorporates into her work as a means of exploring her artistic intuition.

Text by Sahir Ahmed
Photos courtesy of Nina Johnson

Interested in the human psyche and subjects of community, faith, and spirituality, Thunder recollects and recreates her personal experiences from photographs she’s taken. Her practice involves making inkjet color prints of the photos while the printer is low on ink, so that the CYM colors take precedence over the black. She uses the obscured palette to predict unusual coloring in her paintings. While referenced from real places she’s been, her creations often feel otherworldly, as if she taps into “something bigger than herself” that speaks to “the audience and collective consciousness.” The surrealistic scenes based on real moments embody how memories are fragmented, even distorted, as time passes and surroundings change.

This new body of work, inspired by photographs taken at a street parade in Corpus Christi, Texas, and at an all-boys Yeshiva boarding school in Westchester, New York, explores the subject of duality by placing two seemingly unrelated series of paintings in conversation. Fascinated by the energy generated by intentional gatherings of people, whether it’s a street parade or a religious boarding school, Thunder explores this elevated frequency of experience and synergy.

“As someone who spent their formative years in two drastically different communities and environments, it felt natural to investigate these two subjects simultaneously. It’s been a journey for me as an artist to embrace this ‘split’ in my identity through my work and begin turning inwards for information while creating rather than relying on it externally,” says Thunder.

In these series of oil paintings, the settings and their interpretation are both visually and aesthetically distinguishable: vibrant and crowded, solemn and deserted. The Yeshiva series serve as an escape from the works in the Parade and Cotillion series, which center around materialism and contemporary social culture.

Texas / Yeshiva is on view through February 18, 2023.

Marika Thunder, Texas Street Parade (Pirate Bay), 2022, Oil on wood panel, 31.5 x 41.5 in. (Framed)
Marika Thunder, Texas Street Parade (Pirate Bay), 2022 (Detail View)
Marika Thunder, Yeshiva Door 1, 2022, Oil on wood panel, 41.25 x 31.25 in. (Framed)
Marika Thunder, Yeshiva Door 1, 2022 (Detail View)
Marika Thunder, Texas street parade (Glowstick man), 2022, Oil on wood panel, 21 x 21 in. (Framed)
Marika Thunder, Texas street parade (Glowstick man), 2022 (Detail View)