Margaux Valengin is a painter who examines the boundaries of the abstract and the figurative.

Informed by her formative training in France, Belgium, and England, the work bears the influence of female surrealist painters. Through a collage-based process, rooted in both physical and digital archival research, she assembles pictures comprised of scientific illustration and internet stock images. With allusions to European art history, Valengin’s paintings depict the persistence of female bodies, flora, and fauna under the strictures of capitalist society and pose urgent questions of class and gender.

The Sharpe-Walentas Studio Program awards rent-free non-living studio space to 17 visual artists for year-long residencies in DUMBO, Brooklyn. Its mission is to provide working studio space and community for artists. Artists are selected annually based on merit from a competitive pool of applicants by a professional jury comprised of artists and members of the SWSP Artists Advisory Committee.

The Sharpe-Walentas Studio Program is the new face of the Marie Walsh Sharpe Art Foundation Space Program, developed for artists, by artists in 1991. In 2014 the program was renamed the Sharpe-Walentas Studio Program to honor the legacy of Marie Walsh Sharpe and reflect the new sponsorship and commitment of the Walentas Family Foundation.