Walk into the first floor gallery room at MoMA PS1 and you see what can only be described as an outsiders perspective of an acid trip. Shivers, the oil and acrylic based paintings presented by Sascha Braunig, leaves nothing left to the imagination and brings us directly into her fantasy world.
Her paintings contain components reminiscent of classic portraiture; but uses vibrant colors, line variation, and the compressed space of the canvas to create psychedelic humanoid portraits.
Shivers comments on society's need to be “out of the box”, while in reality it compresses us all into the same category. She uses the frame and the space of the canvas to show this, by restraining abstract and crazy colorful lines in a small space.
This visceral experience is combatted with her smooth brush work. While her marks air on the side of wild and spontaneous, with the colors to match, her ability to create smooth skin and to render a variety of different textures brings us into a fantasy land far beyond oil paints and canvas.
I think you do a good job identifying the major points of Braunig’s work. It might be nice to get a little more depth from those. Picking out a few pieces, and explain how the techniques Braunig uses contribute to the work would be good. The use of color especially in these works make them stand out and feel current – like they couldn’t be made before. I think there’s also a nice opportunity to relate her work back to the portraiture of other painters and how they are similar or differ.
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