Contributed by Michael Brennan / “Vicissitudes of Nature” is the magisterial title of Jen Mazza’s first solo exhibition with Ulterior Gallery, and, given the calamitous start of 2025, her Cassandra-like premonitions could hardly be any timelier. Nearly two dozen paintings and works on paper occupy the top floor of the tin-tiled, pitched-ceilinged space. Deftly and seamlessly, Mazza uses a variety of techniques and strategies, appropriating images from multiple sources. The idea is to conflate them with important cultural signifiers while recontextualizing them into new narratives of interiority, as, say, Virginia Woolf did in her contemplation of “the waves” in her eponymous novel, quoted in the show.