Untitled - The Chinati Foundation

sertive and retiring, stolid and precarious,
featherweight and heavyset.
The artist also showed sculptures
made from thin, painted wooden
dowels interlaced to form looping
arabesques, as well as other work
made during her residency. Braun’s
work courts but doesn’t demand attention.
Rigorously constructed, it
seems nonetheless perpetually on the
verge of collapse. Insinuating itself
into the viewer’s field of perception,
it hints at a wide range of possible
associations while never disguising
its quotidian origins or the process of
its making.
Mai Braun was born in Berlin and attended
the Edinburgh College of Art
in Scotland and the Royal College
of Art in London. In 1997-99 she
participated in the Core Fellowship
program at the Museum of Fine Arts
in Houston. She has exhibited in the
U.S. and abroad, including group
shows at the Museum of Fine Arts
and DiverseWorks in Houston; Alagalleria
in Helsinki, Finland; and the
Bronx Museum of Art in New York. In
July 2005 she curated a group exhibition,
“All in the Family,” at the Texas
Gallery in Houston. Her first solo
show was held at Brooklyn Fire Proof,
Inc., in January-February 2006. She
participated in a two-person show at
the Kluuvi Gallery, Helsinki City Art
Museum, in Finland in March 2006;
in April she took part in a group show
entitled “Open Networks Brooklyn”
at Ampersand International Arts in
San Francisco. In 2007 she will show
work as part of the “Exercises in Resourcefulness”
group show at Chuchifritos
Gallery in New York.
Maureen Gallace
September-October 2005
Resident artist Maureen Gallace exhibited
work during the 2005 Open
House weekend.
Gallace grew up in Monroe, Connecticut,
and the majority of her
paintings over the past twenty years
have depicted the landscape of her
native New England. These modestly
scaled works—usually no larger than
a sheet of notebook paper and painted
on linen, panel, or paper—return
repeatedly to a handful of locales:
rural stretches of Massachusetts
and Connecticut and the shores of
Cape Cod. Gallace often focuses on
solitary houses, whose features she
streamlines and simplifies in order to
heighten their sense of form. Houses
become cubes, often portrayed featurelessly,
with no ornaments or en-
MAUREEN GALLACE.
neras. Para Estructura de cartón no. 1,
aplastó las cajas hasta dejarlas planas,
las armó insertándolas en sus propias
ranuras, y luegó colgó la gran estruc-
tura tambaleante del techo del cuarto
trasero del Locker Plant. Montón de pie-
dras fue precisamente eso: un montón
de escombros hechos de cajas pintadas
de un color gris uniforme y apiladas en
un rincón del patio trasero del Locker
Plant. La obra Pilar de roca, que utiliza
más parcamente el cartón, consiste en
una sola caja rectangular vertical alta,
una sola pieza humilde y sin adornos
excepto por la parte superior, que está
pintada y facetada.
Estas obras alcanzan una armonía
entre extremos, ya que son al mismo
tiempo asertivas y retraídas, macizas y
precarias, ligeras y pesadas. La artista
exhibió también otras obras producidas
durante su residencia, incluyendo una
71
trances to interrupt the paint surface.
Thus formalized, the Gallace house
becomes an object of painterly contemplation—a
device utilized to capture
certain effects of climate, season,
and light.
Gallace does a great deal of preparation
for each work, mainly by way
of determining which elements can
be eliminated from a picture and
which should remain. Gallace paints
quickly, mixing colors while wet and
allowing brushstrokes to stand forth
as brushstrokes. This gives the finished
works a sense of immediacy or
direct apprehension. The viewer sees
afresh these barns and seashores,
these cottages and snowscapes. But
there is an odd sense of timelessness
to Gallace’s landscapes as well. Precise
in their evocation of season and
time of day, the paintings show little
which could situate them in a specific
era. A portrait of the Merritt Parkway
in Connecticut could show a view
from last winter—or fifty years ago.
Similarly, people rarely intrude on
Gallace’s scenes. Instead there are
houses, typically the emblem of human
presence, but here bare of such
basic signs of occupancy as windows
and doors. Gallace’s landscapes are
both occupied and vacant, and her
houses keep their secrets. In these
works the old familiar tropes of New
England landscape painting—snow,
woods, barns, sea—are renewed
and revitalized. In the process, they
que estaba hecha de delgadas varas de
madera pintadas y entrelazadas para
formar arabescos rizados. Las obras de
Braun invitan pero no exigen la aten-
ción. Aunque están rigurosamente cons-
truidas, parecen estar perpetuamente a
punto de desmoronarse. Se insinúan en
el campo de visión del observador, su-
giriendo una amplia gama de posibles
asociaciones, pero nunca ocultan ni sus
orígenes cotidianos ni el proceso de su
hechura.
Mai Braun nació en Berlín y asistió al
Colegio de Arte de Edimburgo en Esco-
cia y el Colegio Real de Arte en Londres.
De 1997 a 1997 participó en el progra-
ma Core Fellowship del Museo de Bellas
Artes de Houston. Ha exhibido en los
Estados Unidos y el extranjero, inclu-
yendo exhibiciones grupales en el Mu-
seo de Bellas Artes y DiverseWorks en
Houston; Alagalleria en Helsinki, Fin-
landia; y el Museo de Arte del Bronx y
Brooklyn Fire Proof, Inc. en Nueva York.
En julio de 2005 fue curadora de la ex-
hibición grupal “Todo en familia” en la
Galería Texas en Houston. Su primera
oportunidad como expositora única fue
en enero-febrero de 2006 en Brooklyn
Fire Proof, Inc. Participó en una exhibi-
ción de dos artistas en la Galería Kluuvi
del Museo de Arte de Helsinki en marzo
de 2006. En abril participó en una ex-
hibición grupal intitulada “Open Net-
works Brooklyn” en Ampersand Inter-
national Arts en San Francisco. En 2007
presentará sus obras como parte de la
exhibición grupal “Exercises in Resour-
MAUREEN GALLACE, CHINATI, 2005.