“In my process, the abstract universe encounters the one we live in—a world absorbed by pain and violence—and offers itself up to it in a kind of trust after the end of trust.” - Bracha L. Ettinger as told to Annie Godfrey Larmon, published on Artforum.com, July 2018
Andrew Kreps Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of new paintings and works by the artist and philosopher Bracha L. Ettinger.
Deeply intertwined with her own writing, Ettinger’s intimately-scaled works represent an ongoing examination of the space of wounds, including those that are cultural, historical, as well as personal. Built through successive thin veils of paint and pointillist marks, often over the course of several years, her paintings adopt an almost holographic appearance, as spectral figures emerge from fields of movement. Organized in ongoing series or cycles that take their titles from mythological female figures, as well as art historical scenes like the Pietà, Ettinger looks at the ways in which women have been made to be vessels for trauma, and carriers of grief across generations. Through abstraction, this space is not portrayed as a monolithic one, but a mutable one that connects memory and experience with healing, and builds a resonance across image, language, and emotion.
Bracha L. Ettinger’s solo exhibition Eurydice—Kaddish—Medusa, composed from works from Centre Pompidou’s permanent collection, curated by Alicia Knock, is on view from May 15 at Centre Pompidou, Paris. Ettinger’s work is currently included in the exhibitions XX Biennale Donna, Palazzo Bonacossi, Ferrara, on view through June 30, 2024, and The Shamans / Gli sciaman, curated by Gabriele Lorenzoni and Massimiliano N. Mollona, at MART—Musee di arte moderna e contemporanea di Trento e Rovereto, on view through October 6, 2024. Additionally, her work will be included in the forthcoming group exhibitions 9th Biennial of Painting, curated by Martin Germann, at the Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens, Deurle, and Itinéraires Fantômes, CAPC—musée d'art contemporain, Bordeaux. Past solo exhibitions include: Bracha’s Notebooks, Castello di Rivoli, Turin, 2022, UB Anderson Gallery, University of Buffalo, New York, 2018, Silesian Museum, Katowice, 2017, the Museum of the City of St. Petersburg, Russia, 2013, the Musée des Beaux-Arts d’Angers, France, 2011, the Fundació Antoni Tàpies, Barcelona, 2010, Freud Museum, London, 2009, Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, Helsinki, 2006, and The Drawing Center, New York, 2001, among others. Additionally, Ettinger was included in the exhibition Psychic Wounds: On Art & Trauma, The Warehouse, Dallas, 2021, the 2019 Kochi-Muziris Biennale, India, and the 14th Istanbul Biennial, SALTWATER: A Theory of Thought Forms, 2015. Her works are held in the permanent collections of Centre Pompidou, Paris, Castello di Rivoli, Turin, GAM, Turin, Museum of Angers, France, Israel Museum, Jerusalem, Tel Aviv Museum of Art and Haifa Museum of Art, Israel, Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw, Poland, among others.
Bracha L. Ettinger is the author of numerous articles and books on art, psychoanalysis, aesthetics, and ethics including Regard et Espace-de-bord matrixiels, La lettre volee, 1999, The Matrixial Borderspace (essays from 1994-1999), University of Minnesota Press, 2006, Proto-Ética Matricial, Gedisa, 2019, My Heart Wound-Space, 14 Istanbul Biennial / Wild Pansy Press, University of Leeds. 2015, and Matrixial Subjectivity, Aesthetics, Ethics, Vol 1:1990-2000, edited by Griselda Pollock, Palgrave Macmillan 2020.