A few weeks ago, Marta Lee visited my studio. A few days after that visit, she texted me:
“Hey, what is the deal with that long wood piece of molding that was kind of to the left of where u were sitting? It’s gorgeous”
Marta was referring to an 8-foot-long piece of molding I’ve used as a mahlstick (also spelled ‘maulstick’) since 2018. I probably found it in the trash in my first studio building on Grand Street in Bushwick, and I’ve never thought of it beyond its use as an object to balance my arm on while painting. But Marta was right – it is sort of gorgeous. It’s got a spiraling geometric pattern carved into it, and paint streaks where I swipe it while lifting brushes. This realization led to another – just how unique Marta’s way of seeing the world really is.
To Lee, every object deserves a focused analysis, and she does this dedicated work every minute of every day. To be an object encountered by Marta Lee is to be considered deeply, and then collected, in a sense, into her comprehensive index of shapes, textures, colors, and memories. In 11:11, Lee’s first solo show with Tappeto Volante, she expertly encases her collection of things (personal trinkets, trash, keepsakes, and more) within paintings that are packed with formal rhythm and emotional gravity. They are triumphant examples of the genre of still life paintings – proving that an artist’s items often reflect what’s special about the artist themselves.
Lee’s paintings are fluid and vibrational; while they depict objects, she resists establishing a spatial depth in which these objects could hypothetically rest. Instead, they sit atop the surface of the canvas like puzzle pieces, the negative space between them feeling physical like the blocks of space used in between words on a letter press. Yet, somehow, despite this solidity, Lee achieves atmosphere by virtue of brushy, uninhibited background blends that push more rendered objects forward.
Most items transform through her painting them. Take the hacky sack in the bottom right quadrant of Still Life: It is clear that Lee (who has had one hacky sack since she was born and considers them to be self-identifiers within her work) mixed local, specific colors to block in the hacky sack, painting in its dirty-lemon yellow and royal purple rhombus designs slowly, preserving its knitted texture and signature lumpy shape. On the top of the hacky sack, however, it is as if Marta’s laser-focused image processing locomotive jumped off the rails. A red pattern is painted, but it looks more like a drawing than a design on a hacky sack. Here, Marta decides that recording doesn’t imply a perfect record. The hacky sack’s painted image is augmented by Marta’s decisions regarding which details were worthwhile to reproduce in perfect fidelity, and which were not. This selective realism draws viewers across Marta’s picture planes in search of the ways in which she bends the constitution of her beloved objects as she observes them, and we get to relish in her decisiveness.
If there were ever an apt tool for Marta Lee to paint in isolated focus, it would have to be a 24 Standard Calibration Chart. Something about the utility of such a chart as a key to validate and align a subject’s ‘real’ colors rings true to the artist’s apparent ambitions in 11:11. Lee’s painting, entitled 24 Standard Calibration Chart, stands out as a cheeky comment on the subjectivity of color and image, no matter how ‘objective’ the subject matter may look on its face.
In A Very Dreary Christmas, what appears to be wrapping paper or paper bags decorated with Christmas and floral designs covers the majority of the painting. There are jagged gray forms of varying widths across the white paper with flowers, and a few black, crunchy shapes along the bottom edge of this section. Again, we can see where Lee lifts off from representation. It feels rebellious to refuse the challenge of copying each individual articulation of a material’s wrinkles. Lee paints these wrinkles simply and with enduring loyalty to her own way of seeing. Meanwhile, the music books adorned with mistletoe in the top right quadrant of the painting are described with painstakingly realistic detail. Contrasts like these flood Lee’s paintings with personality; it’s impossible not to consider the artist’s voice when every canvas betrays her interests, disinterests, boredom, excitement, fascination, fixation, and adoration, all at once.
Everyone who loves painting should go see Marta Lee’s solo exhibition 11:11 at Tappeto Volente before it closes. The show is open until November 2nd.
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All photos courtesy of Tappeto Volante.
Marta Lee: 11:11 at Tappeto Volante
126 13th St, Brooklyn, NY 11215
Through November 2nd, 2025
About the writer: Kate Sherman is a painter based in Brooklyn, NY. She has exhibited in various group exhibitions in New York City and Philadelphia. Sherman is currently pursuing her M.F.A. at Hunter College. @scheiermank