Behind the Studio Doors: Inside Mana Contemporary’s Vibrant Tapestry of Artistic Innovation

This Sunday offered a rare and precious opportunity as Mana Contemporary in Jersey City opened its doors for one of its biannual open studio events, inviting the public to step behind the scenes and witness the creative process firsthand. Within the expansive floors of this artistic haven, over 300 artists across diverse visual disciplines, painting, sculpture and fashion, showcased their talents and works-in-progress. The community spans generations of creative practice, featuring artists with decade-long careers alongside masters who have been refining their craft for over 60 years.

Mana Contemporary's story began in 2009 when moving company entrepreneur Moishe Mana and partner Eugene Lemay, alongside co-founders Shai Baitel and Yigal Ozeri, transformed vacant warehouse space into what would officially launch as a creative center in 2011. Today, the million-square-foot brick facility stands as a testament to artistic vision, housing not only individual studios but also the Middle East Center for the Arts (MECA) and prestigious collections including the estates of Irving Penn and Dan Flavin. For art enthusiasts, the center represents a veritable playground where studio after studio reveals creators pushing the boundaries of artistic expression.

During our visit, artist Qinza Najm generously welcomed us into her workspace, sharing that "The community at Mana is really special. While it takes effort to meet your studio neighbors, I've organized community events and curated art shows (one most recently in the East Village) with my contemporaries at Mana. We give feedback on one another's work and it's a lovely space to create."

Mana Contemporary’s flagship is in Jersey City, and it has grown to include Chicago, and Miami. The cultural hub functions as a distributed institution dedicated to celebrating creativity, supporting artists, and connecting creative hubs worldwide. Through its global community committed to mutual support and progressive thought, Mana offers world-class exhibitions, residencies, career development opportunities, and meaningful conversations both in-person and online.

What makes Mana truly distinctive is its environment where practitioners across various disciplines work side by side, fostering experimentation, collaboration, and mutual inspiration. This approach builds a profound and personal dimension to contemporary art creation. Among the many talented artists whose studios captivated us during the open event were Qinza Najm, Rick Klauber, Kwesi Kwarteng, and Yigal Ozeri.

Yigal Ozeri: Photorealism at its Best

Upon entering Yigal Ozeri's studio at Mana Contemporary, the artist himself was unmistakable - reclined casually on a couch in his signature white bell bottoms, red denim jacket, matching glasses, and striking shock of hair. The studio's high ceilings showcased his breathtaking photorealistic paintings focused on two distinct themes: elegant cowboy boots and portraits of women in magnificent landscapes. His extraordinary talent was evident in every piece, particularly in his meticulous capture of light on faces and the intricate details of hair and water, though his finest works had already been shipped to Geneva for the upcoming Art Basel.

What first drew our attention was his cowboy boot series, featuring women's legs from the thighs down, either dangling the footwear outside car windows as if resting during a long road trip, or standing beside vehicles at roadside stops. Despite the absence of faces, these compositions masterfully evoke the same sense of freedom and youthful innocence found in his portrait work, using just two recurring elements: cowboy boots and automobiles. On this warm day in New York, the paintings resonated with our growing wanderlust, showcasing Ozeri's remarkable ability to stir profound emotion through seemingly simple compositions.

New York-based Israeli artist Ozeri has earned international acclaim for his large-scale cinematic portraits blending Pre-Raphaelite aesthetics with contemporary sensual femininity. His work, rooted in Carl Jung's concept of anima, depicts a revitalized connection to nature while prompting viewers to confront subconscious feminine identity. His photorealistic oil paintings have been exhibited worldwide and are featured in permanent collections including The Whitney Museum of American Art, The Jewish Museum in New York, and the Albertina in Vienna, cementing his position as a master of the genre who compels viewers to explore the captivating boundary between reality and fantasy.

Rick Klauber: Unexpected Materials

Meeting Rick Klauber reveals an immediately perceptible quality: his profound artistic intuition. Working in abstraction, his practice spans from drawings with "oil sticks" and high pigmented wax crayons to his signature Shim Paintings - the manufacturers of shims create them as shingles and carpenters often use them to "shim up" and level constructions. This unique medium emerged serendipitously when preparing for his 2007 solo exhibition at the Amelie Wallace Gallery in Old Westbury. Confronted with the gallery's expansive walls and driven to present something fresh, Klauber's creative eye fell upon a discarded pack of shims, transforming this humble construction material into vehicles for artistic expression. These distinctive works have since been showcased at prestigious New York venues including Howard Scott Gallery and Elizabeth Harris Galleries. In 2023, his stunning silver masterpiece "a bird is more" earned pride of place at Mana Contemporary's entrance as part of his featured artist exhibition.

While Klauber's wall installations command attention with their grandeur, his smaller pieces captivate equally through thoughtful composition and vibrant color schemes. Works like "New Plan" and "Amulet" particularly resonate with their playful energy and bold use of primary colors - a hallmark evident throughout his portfolio, from oil crayon inspirations to completed shim works. Klauber's use of primary colors connects him to a distinguished lineage of abstract artists who embraced this fundamental palette. His approach echoes Mondrian's geometric explorations in red, yellow and blue, while carrying forward the energetic primary color experiments of Kandinsky, who believed these hues possessed inherent spiritual qualities. Like Calder, whose mobiles often featured these elemental colors to create dynamic visual relationships, Klauber harnesses their power but in his own distinctive architectural vocabulary.

A lifelong New Yorker, Klauber's artistic journey includes formal study at Bard College alongside formative experiences working closely with Helen Frankenthaler and Robert Motherwell in their studios, relationships that undoubtedly influenced his approach to abstraction, gesture, and color. His shim paintings function essentially as "found brushstrokes," which he paints and combines with masterful precision. With exhibitions spanning domestic and international venues, Klauber's work has secured its place in numerous public and private collections, cementing his reputation as an innovator who transforms ordinary materials into extraordinary expressions of color and form.

Kwesi Kwarteng: Fabric that Transcends Cultural Boundaries

Newark-based artist Kwesi Kwarteng uses a diversity of fabrics to explore ideas of multiculturalism, global interconnectivity and identity. Since emigrating from Ghana to the US as a teenager in 2007, he has met people from many places and different cultural identities and background and his work celebrates these connections.

As a Ghanaian, Kwarteng believes that fabrics, like languages, are important signifiers and carriers of culture, communicating unspoken messages to those who understand their embedded “language”. He is interested in the roles that fabric plays in the lives of those who use them. In Ghana, the colors and fabric of clothing worn by individuals convey different milestones or emotional states- mourning, tragedy, childbirth, marriage, or happiness- and this is true for other cultures as well. By utilizing a mix of fabrics from all over the world, Kwarteng encodes his work with multicultural symbols that are easily recognized by those within the specific cultures but also appreciated by the others are creative design elements in their own right.

Kwesi has a BFA from the School of Visual Arts, NY. His works are in private collections in the US, Germany, and Ghana. He is a recent recipient of Newark's creative catalyst grant award.

Qinza Najm: Transforming Cultural Textiles into Profound Artistic Statements

Qinza Naja’s style caught our eye from her solo show in the East Village this April, but her evolution as an artist has reached a compelling crescendo, with her distinctive style now attracting significant attention from the art world's most discerning eyes. During the Open Studios event, representatives from galleries preparing for Art Basel could be seen visiting her studio, carefully selecting works for the prestigious December fair. This recognition speaks volumes about Najm's artistic trajectory, which continues to strengthen with each new piece. The strong ties to her Pakistani cultural roots combined with her innovative medium of painted carpets clearly sets her work apart in a crowded contemporary art landscape. Visitors' reactions were particularly telling - expressions of curiosity and wonder evident as they encountered paint on carpet, a combination completely novel to many observers.

As a Pakistani-born immigrant in New York, Najm's lived experiences have profoundly shaped her artistic vision and practice. Through this intimate dialogue between personal history and creative expression, we gain insight into how she strategically elevates once-walked-upon textiles to eye level, challenging viewers to reconsider what—and who—society often overlooks. By weaving together threads of her own experience into these powerful artistic statements about belonging, identity, and transformation, Najm creates work that resonates on multiple levels—aesthetically striking while carrying profound cultural significance. Her practice represents a masterful navigation of the space between cultural preservation and contemporary artistic innovation, resulting in work that speaks eloquently to both the diaspora experience and universal human themes of home, displacement, and the constant reconstruction of identity.