Brigitte Engler: New American Abstract Painting, curated by Chris Kraus at the SPRING/BREAK Art Show 2023 (5880 Adams Blvd, Culver City, CA.) in Los Angeles in Booth 32, presents a one-person exhibition of paintings on plywood by Engler. The abstract paintings are based on patterns of everyday life, found by chance on the street and in a school.
Painting with gouache acrylic on birch plywood panels to reproduce the found collages, Brigitte Engler brings together fiction and reality in an immersive field. The titles “objets mathématiques (pédagogiques)” are numbered to indicate several known variations of the ready-made compositions. The bold colors are brushed over masking tape delineating irregularly shaped triangles, squares and rectangles activated by scissor cuts and torn edges. The wood grain patterns come through the acrylic wash and in the reserve space of the painting.Yo
Born in Paris, Brigitte Engler came to New York in 1980 to study art at the Whitney Program and became part of the Downtown Arts community. She has had three solo exhibitions previously in Los Angeles, participated in the French Cultural Services exhibitions “Côte Ouest” and “Ceci n’est pas…” and at Commonwealth and Council gallery in 2013. Her tribute to writer-philosopher Sylvère Lotringer with whom she collaborated on artist projects, was published in the Brooklyn Rail in 2021. Her work is in private collections in Europe and in the US. She was the recipient of a NYFA-CAC grant in 2021.