NEW YORK, NY.- The Garment District Alliance announced the latest in its ongoing series of public art exhibits, featuring a collection of eight vibrant paintings titled Spectacles by artist Dunja Messer-Jourdain.

Located inside the Kaufman Arcade building on 139 W 35th Street, the free exhibit is accessible to the public through February 4, 2023. Spectacles is a part of the Garment District Space for Public Art program, which showcases artists in unusual locations throughout the year and over 17 years it has produced more than 200 installations, exhibits and performances.

“With shimmering glitter and electrifying colors, Dunja’s paintings are both mesmerizing and deeply moving,” said Barbara A. Blair, president of the Garment District Alliance. “By putting viewers at the center of her creative process, Dunja enables them to see the world through her eyes. We are thrilled to present Spectacles as a part of our series of public exhibitions and we encourage everyone to stop by this astounding exhibit this winter.”

Through oil, beads, glitter, and acrylics, Messer-Jourdain's abstract paintings reflect her unusual relationship to visual experience. Since childhood, Messer-Jourdain has been affected by a form of synesthesia, a condition that involves an extreme sensitivity to colors and textures and produces physical sensations. Spectacles reflects her experiences with this condition, sublimated through the prism of her playful, complex, deceptively placid, and gentle personality. As the colors swirl around a viewer’s chosen focal point, the paintings evoke a sense of calm that allow for meditative focus and transport Messer-Jourdain's audience inward.

Born in Germany, Messer-Jourdain is a mixed media artist and fashion designer located in New York City. She received her early training and exposure to fabrics at her family’s traditional European master tailor atelier in Germany and attended the College for Design in Hanover and the University of Applied Sciences in Bremen, where she received a degree in international management. Messer-Jourdain also studied design, the making of textiles and coloring at Co-Optex International Company in Chennai, India.

The Garment District is home to diverse business sectors from technology to hospitality and includes thousands of people working in the creative economy, including fine and performing artists, designers, architects, photographers and more than a hundred theaters, galleries, performance spaces and studios.