October 9 – November 15, 2025

On View: October 9 through November 15 (Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays 12:00 - 6:00 pm)

Opening Reception: Sunday, October 12, 3:00 - 5:00 pm

Artist’s Talk: Thursday, October 23, 7:00 - 8:30 pm

Rosa Kittsteiner and Mark Ostapchuk share time spent in Minneapolis developing visual work. Their pictures are typically informed by visual responses to personal history and broader conerns about our place in the world. Rosa’s multi media paintings often feature gatherings of fantastic fish. Mark’s recent paintings and intaglio prints include stylized ghost and plant sprout profiles. Both Mark and Rosa embrace an eagerness to question and critically respond to decisions in individual pieces and the overall direction of their work. The pieces in this exhibition are rooted in this reflection and practice.

Rosa Kittsteiner, *Before Time*, acrylic on canvas, 2025

Rosa Kittsteiner’s Artist Statement: I have a fascination with the endless possibilities of fish as mythical creatures; a creature that can hold the universe inside of it, unveiling layer upon layer of reality. The fish is my mythical creature. I think of the fish as primordial creatures that can become anything. And as such, they are the perfect vehicle for creating a new reality. I am interested in taking different parts of nature and the universe and transforming them into a different puzzle. One of my interests in the last few years has been the exploration of drawing within my paintings. Using the energy of a drawing to blur the definition between painting and drawing. In my work I am looking for the vibrancy and truth of the moment.I developed a way of working with mixed media looking for the challenge of working with the limitations of paper to create the blur between painting and drawing. Growing up looking at the ocean from our family home in Chile I very much lived in an imaginary world. The mysterious underwater landscapes always intrigued me. I thought of the fish as metaphors for adapting and being changeable.

Rosa Kittsteiner’s Biography: Rosa Kittsteiner was born in Valparaiso, Chile. She moved to Minnesota in 1977, where she attended the University of Minnesota and received her Bachelor’s Degree in Fine Arts. Since then she has traveled and worked throughout Europe and India.Also studied ceramics in Madrid. She is inspired by the work of Jean Michel Basquiat and traditional decorative elements from Asian cultures. She works with mix media,color paper,ink,pencil and pen and acrylic on canvas. She received the McKnight Fellowship Grant. Since that time she has shown in Philadelphia, Chicago, and Minneapolis.

Mark Ostapchuk, *Traveling with Terry and Julie*, oil on paper on wood panel, 24” x 36”, 2024

Mark Ostapchuk’s Artist Statement: My visual work is often marked by bright colors, obsessive patterns and an eagerness to revise and build up layers of of paint. I think that the fondness I developed many years ago, for Matisse’s tight compositions and elegant color arrangement still gives me clues about how to play out my own drawings, prints and paintings. Apart from looking at other artists for influences, I like I like the shapes I encounter in everyday domestic life. For example, playing card club shapes and those decorative scallops of 1960s suburban house millwork find themselves in my drawings and paintings. Sprouts in my gardens and the decorative motif’s within my great aunt’s needlepoint are reoccuring characters in my current paintings and prints. I also look to the ways jazz singers interpret and improvise standard songs. I like to think that drawings and paintings share jazz music’s possibilities to point out something poignant in what first might seem cliché.

Mark Ostapchuk’s Biography Mark Ostapchuk lives in St. Paul and works in Minneapolis. When not in the studio or print room, in summer, Mark may be found trying his best at gardening at his St. Paul home or cabins on Lake Superior in Bayfield Wisconsin. He has shown in the Minneapolis College of Art and Design Gallery, University of Minnesota Gallery (now Weisman Art Museum), Soap Factory (Minneapolis), Phipps Center for the Arts and the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. Mark Ostapchuk received his MFA in drawing and painting from the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. His awards include a 1992 and 2023 McKnight Foundation Artist Fellowship. He completed a Kala Institute residency in Berkeley, California in 2024.