Cheryl Molnar contends with the tension between human progress and nature in her collage-paintings, juxtaposing abstracted modernist architectural forms with natural ones through the use of archival and landscape photography, as well as gouache painting.
Currently based in New York City, Molnar’s collage and multimedia work is firmly rooted in discussions of human impact. Her work considers the effects of gentrification, displacement, and climate change on sociocultural realities, while drawing on memories of her youth on suburban Long Island and family ties to Southern California. Molnar’s reimagined landscapes are repositories of memory, identity, and change, allowing viewers to reflect on memories and places they cling to, but to which they cannot return.
Molnar received a BFA from Rhode Island School of Design in 2000 and completed an MFA at Pratt Institute in 2005. She participated in her first solo and group exhibitions in 2006, including Life and Death of a City at McCaig-Welles Gallery and the RISD Biennial at Exit Art, both in New York. Molnar has exhibited across the United States, including solo and duo shows at the University of Arizona’s Joseph Gross Gallery in Tucson, Arizona (2012), Smack Mellon in New York (2012), Gallery Geranmayeh in New York (2016), and Omni Gallery in Uniondale, NY (2022). Molnar has been featured in group exhibitions at General Electric Headquarters in Fairfield, Connecticut (2008), the Islip Art Museum in New York (2013), the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts in New York (2018, 2022), the Steinberg Museum of Art in Brookville, NY (2019), and Art on Paper in New York (2021, 2022), and has exhibited internationally at Contemporary Istanbul (2021). Molnar has been commissioned by Los Angeles County for the High Desert Restorative Care Center in Lancaster, California and by the New York Department of Cultural Affairs for a ceramic tile mural installation at PS19Q in Queens. Molnar continues to further her work as an artist, and has completed residencies at Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, Fire Island National Park Service, Smack Mellon, and Cooper Union. Her work can also be found in the collections of Cantor Fitzgerald, Thrivent Financial, and Microsoft.