In an era where reality feels increasingly uncertain, artist Marta Lee offers a unique approach to understanding what's real through her solo exhibition "11:11" at Tappeto Volante gallery in Brooklyn's Gowanus neighborhood. The show, which runs through November 2, presents a collection of still life paintings that capture everyday objects with remarkable intimacy and precision.
Lee's artistic process involves carefully composing objects into tableaux before painting them, creating works that feature record covers, art supplies, knitwear, and tins of candy. Her objects tend to stack on top of one another within the compositional plane, creating a visual density that evokes a diagrammatic quality. The works function almost like blueprints for construction, and given the personal nature of the objects depicted, it appears Lee is building an ark of her own memories and experiences, one painting at a time.
The exhibition reveals Lee's distinctive approach to scale and representation. Lines and shapes meander into forms that appear more vernacular than schematized, with depictions of patterns from brickwork to woven fabrics that rhyme rather than repeat exactly. What makes her work particularly striking is her commitment to painting many objects at their actual size. In "Old and New Order (Diary)" from 2024, a receipt appears at the same dimensions it would have in real life, creating an immediacy that can only be experienced in person.
This attention to scale becomes lost when viewing the works online, where the color space appears flattened and the peculiar quality of Lee's approach disappears entirely. In person, viewers can appreciate how the colors ease them into each scene, with hues that are less saturated and more harmonized with her idiosyncratic brush strokes. The effect creates what could be described as a palette for a "folk Tiepolo," demonstrating the importance of experiencing art in its intended physical context.
The exhibition includes several notable works spanning 2024 and 2025. "Rainbow (Around Her Neck)" from 2024 combines acrylic, crayon, and graphite on linen over canvas, while "Prisma" from 2025 uses acrylic on linen. Other significant pieces include "I practiced the color names while she played solitaire (Day and Night)" from 2024, which incorporates acrylic, crayon, oil, and pastel on canvas, and "Baue Mit Mir (Box)" from 2025, created with acrylic and crayon on linen.
Lee's work suggests she is portraying more than mere objects, but rather an entire reality worth belonging to—one populated by what is closest to her both figuratively and physically. This closeness creates the impression that the artist is grounding herself to an existence made more objective by the very force of her subjectivity, by how she weaves herself into every element that fills the void in time and space.
Rather than building a private reality, Lee's restraint in maintaining a 1:1 scale with her painted objects suggests a desire to establish stakes in the reality she shares with viewers. Given the often inhospitable nature of contemporary existence, marked by grief, pain, and seemingly arbitrary suffering, her work seems to declare without explicitly stating: "I'm real. I belong here. I'm not going anywhere."
The exhibition, organized by Tappeto Volante gallery, continues through November 2 at 126 13th Street in Gowanus, Brooklyn. Lee's approach to still life painting offers viewers a meditation on presence and belonging in an increasingly digital world, where the value of physical experience and direct observation becomes ever more precious.
