Balanced Structures

Hollis Taggart Downtown is pleased to present Balanced Structures, a two-person exhibition of new and recent works by Anna Pietrzak and Tommy Fitzpatrick. Both artists consider how structures take form and persist in memory, through material-driven practices. Architecture serves as a shared point of departure, approached as inhabitable space and also as a conceptual framework through which time, action, and impermanence are understood. Moving between recognizable forms and more ambiguous spatial conditions, the works trace the accumulation of meaning embedded in material and surface. The exhibition will be on view from February 27 through April 4, 2026, with an opening reception on Friday, February 27, from 6-8pm at 109 Norfolk Street.

Anna Pietrzak's background in architecture informs her understanding of the interplay between weight and space. While always non-figurative, her forms are unmistakably bodily. They lean, press, and balance as if subject to gravity. Extending the language of her earlier two dimensional works into physical space, her recent practice expands into three-dimensional wall reliefs. These organic sculptural forms exist as artifacts, which Pietrzak describes as “remnants shaped by erosion that embody enduring memory and persistence.” Alongside her usage of 24 karat gold leaf, the wall reliefs incorporate platinum leaf and deep jewel tones in enamel paint. While these materials are associated with weight and permanence, Pietrzak renders them luminous, fragile, and quietly emotive.

Tommy Fitzpatrick approaches architecture through lived spaces. Rather than finished buildings, he is drawn to renderings - spaces that exist as propositions of possibility. Like Pietrzak, materiality is central to his work. Using trowels and spatulas, tools traditionally used for laying concrete, he pours, cuts, scrapes, and shapes paint in thick, tactile layers, as if physically constructing his houses. In allowing the paint to take precedence, the works become increasingly about their own surfaces rather than depicting something specific. At the same time, Fitzpatrick invites the viewer to inhabit the space, as they would their own homes, or even a memory they once knew. Beyond representation, his architecture functions as a record, an action suspended in time.Presented together, Pietrzak’s and Fitzpatrick’s works treat architecture as a living system rather than a static form. Both practices reveal the traces of human experience, through the slow accumulation of erosion, the gestures of construction, and the act of remembering. Shared qualities of spatial presence, memory, impermanence, and physicality emerge and exist in conversation.

About Anna Pietrzak
A first-generation Polish-American, Anna Pietrzak (b. 1987) grew up in Indiana and received a Master of Architecture (M.Arch) from the University of Cincinnati. Her work has been featured in group exhibitions at Hollis Taggart, Trotter & Sholer Gallery, In Passing Gallery, and ZH Projects, New York City, as well as at the Woolwich Contemporary Print Fair, London. Pietrzak presented her solo exhibition Before Shadows at The Place Gallery, New York (2020). Her work is included in private collections around the world, including Dubai, Venice, Los Angeles, Chongqing, Casablanca, and Las Vegas. Several of her works are installed in the elite private suites of the Royal Mansour hotel, owned by the King of Morocco.

About Tommy Fitzpatrick

Tommy Fitzpatrick (b. 1969) grew up in Dallas, Texas, and lives and works in San Antonio, Texas. He received a BA in Fine Art from The University of Texas and an MFA from Yale University School of Art. He has received numerous awards, including the Winsor Newton Oil Bar Limited Prize from Yale University, given in recognition of outstanding work in painting and printmaking. Fitzpatrick has exhibited extensively throughout the United States and abroad, including over 20 solo exhibitions, most recently Homescapes at Qualia Contemporary Art, Palo Alto (2024), Dwellings at Peter Mendenhall Gallery, Los Angeles (2023), and Shape Shifting at Hollis Taggart, New York (2023).

For more information about Balanced Structures, please contact us at info@hollistaggart.com or +1 212.628.4000.

For press inquiries, please contact us at press@hollistaggart.com or +1 212.628.4000.