Jenny Brosinski, 'Wish you were here': PLUS-ONE GALLERY, (NEW SOUTH)
Brosinski is not only a painter. Of course, there are painterly aspects such as colors, forms, lines and composition. But together, they reveal a story. ‘Wish You Were Here’ shows large canvases, often larger than life. Brosinski uses these formats because they seem more challenging, it’s as if her body determines the different actions and strokes.
Although her work is not figurative, the human figure is unmistakably present. Due to the considerable sizing, painterly gestures are important. Her canvases are dry, sometimes concise. But bright colors prevail, she uses brush strokes, charcoal and spray paint with a lot of bravado and spontaneity. She is literally fighting with both hands.
A formal description of her work is not very revealing. You can either try to analyze and interpret the paintings, or you can experience them. They don’t stay in the ranks but stand out: they either seduce or anger. Her canvases are powerful, but they also radiate fragility. Scale and spatiality play a key role. The lines are winding, but direct. They are resilient and shimmer over the canvas. The painterly gestures do not solidify, they keep moving. They pose questions about how an image can be conceived, how it is realized, but also how it is perceived. Brosinski shows the complexity of both the medium of painting itself and its history. Obviously, her works are expressions of color and feelings, but they are also thoughtful, aware of themselves. Brosinski makes triple jumps in time and art. Almost as if her works are a hesitant step towards the history of American painting.
Her smaller paintings seem like fragments. Bits and pieces that reveal their own short story, a reformulation in her declaration of love to painting. Certain works seem to only cover a motive; small scribbles, a few brush strokes, charcoal smudges, as if she were portraying the creative process of a painting. Some are chaotic, others harmonious. But often they are simply beautiful with clear references and a great aesthetic desire. As if they were a beautiful hommage to the work of Cy Twombly.
The show ‘Wish you were here’, named after Pink Floyd’s 1975 song, brings together a series of paintings and drawings. In this exhibition, Brosinski chants about the same powerlessness, the same inability to return to reality. A way to show in images what you cannot say in words. An inability to reconcile with reality.
Besides the paintings on canvas, Brosinski also shows some works on paper.
These drawings are done faster, as if they are only notes for what she wants to perform on canvas later. They have an idiosyncratic rhythm. Brosinski describes them as analytical, in contrast to the paintings, which she primarily associates more with emotions.
She uses color as an expression of remembrance, as a reminder of past moments. They allude to a biography that should be kept a secret from the viewer. The paintings remain the result of the painter’s physical actions, who takes her own body as the measure for the canvases. They are tender, loving, hard and dirty. But Brosinski doesn’t shout, she whispers. She minimizes an excess of meaning, as if she has peeled away the layers until only painterly shapes and gestures remain.
