Atmosphere: Melinda Braathen
1923 S Santa Fe Avenue
Los Angeles, CA 90021
160.02 x 160.02 cm
Baert Gallery is pleased to present Atmosphere, the gallery’s second solo exhibition of works by Melinda Braathen on view from 24 February to 30 March. In her new oil paintings, Braathen commandeers the liquidity of the medium to render atmospheric landscapes that transcend planes of existence.
The most elementary of interpretations may describe the paintings in this show as vibrant meditations on nature yet the artist’s exploration is something much more intentional; evincing constantly shifting environments, where climate, material condition, and psychology are indulged over representational forms.
In this new series of works, the artist refers to a text by Gilles Deleuze in whichhe references Paul Cézanne’s belief that “the painter must look beyond a landscape to its chaos … to the point where one no longer sees forms or even matter, but only forces, densities, intensities.” It is from this principle that Braathen’s new body of work departs, reaching for an embodiment of the manifold definitions of atmosphere.
Through her psychologically charged paintings, Melinda Braathen explores the experience of landscape, where the material and energetic interplay with the protean world of our sensations. For Braathen, drawing from nature is a way to body forth a reality of the world that is often far stranger and more alive then our best thoughts can reach, while simultaneously addressing its frightening unpredictability and constantly shifting essence.
Engaged in close observation of the natural world, Braathen builds up the surface of her paintings with variegated gestural marks that bring out the recognizable qualities of the painted subject while ushering in a deeper sensitivity to the environment’s elemental and energetic forces. The spaces she creates often feel like they could break open or shift at any moment. Mysterious light further evokes enigmatic and unseen energies. Memories, sensations, and emotions appear tied to the rhythms of nature through her distinctive abstract visual language, textures and color palette, seamlessly bridging myriad interior and external elements in a single, unified space.