Broad Street Review
November 20, 2015
Samantha Maldonado
Subversive wisdom: review of "Old Enough to Know Better: at Crane Arts
Each of the individual works engages the viewer in its own created world. Virginia Maksymowicz’s sculpture She Talks Too Much is unsettling: a white head mounted flush to the wall shows lines of tension while coughing out random, perfect little white letters. A “screw you” to those who say she talks too much, or a kiss-off to those who themselves talk too much?
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Arts Atlanta
October 17, 2013
Harriette Grissom
Irony overshadows angst, humor edges anger in show of women artists at Agnes Scott
The more than 40 women artists in “Material Witness,” at Agnes Scott College’s Dalton Gallery through November 16, approach the politics of self, community and world with wry wit and an intensity that is all the more potent for being tempered.
“Where the Bones Lie, Rebuild,” a series of box-framed sculptures of bones and bone-like artifacts by Virginia Maksymowicz, reflects something important about the spirit of this exhibit. These works combine an archetypal sensibility with the scrutinizing gaze of an observant investigator. Like many other works in this impressive show, they stand as a “material witness” to the artistic intelligence that created them.
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Philadelphia Inquirer
July 29, 2012
Edith Newhall
Galleries: Shows are a good reason for a short trip to Delaware
Wilmington's ground zero for contemporary art, the Delaware Center for the Contemporary Arts, is having a particularly good moment. Center curators J. Susan Isaacs and Maiza Hixson and guest curator Julien Robson have come up with several surprisingly diverting exhibitions of contemporary art that run through the summer.
For "Fragile Boundaries," the global-minded Scottish-born curator [Robson] has assembled a tidy group of 13 artists whose works in various mediums reflect his attraction to art that pushes beyond the expectations of its particular medium - and that refuses to be easily categorized.
Two of the more obvious examples of resistance in Robson's exhibition are Virginia Maksymowicz's fulsome Panis Angelicus, a cast plaster sculpture of what appears to be an upper section of a Corinthian column overflowing with cast-plaster loaves of bread and broken plaster ornamentation, and Leslie Friedman's Tasty, an installation of wall-mounted screen prints and a large pile of shiny oversize soda cans. Maksymowicz's exploration of the relationship between the description of the grave of the mythical goddess Persephone and the real caryatid figures at the Erechtheion in Athens is as still as any sculpture, but its eccentric bounty of ornamentation immediately suggests motion.
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Philadelphia Inquirer
Edith Newhall
October 16, 2011
Galleries: Look at these . . .
Of the numerous exhibitions and window installations on Lancaster Avenue that make up the "Look! Lancaster Avenue" art project, running through November . . . not to be missed . . . a group show of five artists, "Queries," at 3808 Lancaster Ave.
Some of the highlights of "Queries," . . . include Virginia Maksymowicz's cast hydrostone sculptures of forms derived from the human body, which are reminiscent of casts by Marcel Duchamp . . .
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Philadelphia Inquirer
February 12, 2010
Victoria Donohoe
Work that radiates pure energy
Virginia Maksymowicz's sculpture has the feel of "real art," of art that looks like art.
And did you also notice that each of her sculptures of female nudes in her Michener Sculpture Garden solo, "Aesthetic Distance," sits or crouches atop a tall column, high above your head?
In this area artist's newest work, we're given a tender and moving homage to ordinary women. This gifted and broadly experienced sculptor, whose work generally tries to come to terms with some of the issues of our day, deserves a salute, and your ongoing attention.
Maksymowicz is onto something here about the lost potential of women who are out of reach and almost out of sight, with no way to climb off their pedestals. We respond with a nod of recognition.
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Philadelphia Inquirer
October 23, 2009
Victoria Donohoe
Works made of paper bring fragile technique to a show at City Hall
Twenty Philadelphia-area artists are represented, each showing one or several works in a juried display selected by Winifred A. Lutz, a sculptor distinguished for her sensitive renderings in this fragile medium.
Other high points are pieces by Maria Anasazi and Virginia Maksymowicz.
Maksymowicz is modestly socially aware in her piece, modeled on her own head, bent way forward so her facial features are completely hidden in her hands. The piece suggests personal experiences of an artist with a feminist viewpoint, and it has a beautifully poised strength and delicacy.
This featherweight sculpture cannot be mistaken for conventional artwork. It is about deep personal feelings hauntingly explored via a type of realism that more conventional artwork simply does not have.
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New York Newsday
Ariella Budick
April 11, 2008
Playing matchmaker with these six "couples"
The Islip Art Museum's "Couples," curated by Karen Shaw, assembl[es] the work of six couples and invit[es] viewers to deduce which artist is paired with which. Virginia Maksymowicz and Blaise Tobia at first seem diametrically opposed in their approach, but it's possible to discern common threads . . .
Maksymowicz is . . . interested in the way a woman's anatomy, however matter of factly presented, can generate unease. Her "couple," life-size casts of the lower halves of two women's naked bodies, come accompanied by warnings of "adult material." In her more direct style, Maksymowicz raises the same issues her husband does with regard tothe female form: Why should caution be needed? Why is this territory still hostile?
Maksymowicz and Tobia are the only ones to have smuggled sexual content into an otherwise prim exhibit that is ostensibly about love.