MELINDA BRAATHEN
Atmosphere

February 24 – March 30, 2024
Opening on Saturday, February 24, 2024
From 6 to 8 pm

MELINDA BRAATHEN

ATMOSPHERE

FEB 24 MARCH - 30 2024

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 which he 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.

Most of the paintings in Atmosphere are large scale, their vastness an invitation to enter the psychic wilderness with our whole body and experience the sources of heat, movement, textures, and force of Braathen’s space. She builds up the surface of her paintings with variegated gestural marks that bring out the recognisable qualities of the subject while alerting the viewer to the environment’s protean forces. As such, both the painting process and the final work is transient, often feeling like it’s about to break open, change, or begin to vibrate or radiate in unforeseen ways.

Each of the painted spaces in Atmosphere are overgrown to varying degrees. In In Time, In Tempo sprawl- ing vegetation is depicted as if it were anthropomorphized, gutting an abandoned car, gluttony sweltering through
the layers of paint. In these thriving ecosystems, Braathen expresses feelings of anxiety and anticipation. At the time of their production, she was at varying stages of pregnancy, a state of being that requires adaption to continuous changes. To accommodate new life, biological and creative transfor-

mations were made. Braathen converted to a non-toxic oil painting practice that used a fraction of her usual colour palette, instead relying on textural shifts, expressive mark making and layering to convey energy. Shifts in perspective also manifest in Braathen’s references to paths. The 80x60 inch painting Sound Chamber of a mangrove forest in water holds various openings in its frame and is imagined by the artist as the unknown and anticipatory space that will open up to her after the delivery of her child.

The painting Entwined depicting a person crossing a body of water, holds a similar tension. Both the central figure and her surrounding environment share the same thermal colour palette; breathing, pulsating, and thriving in symbiosis. It leaves us begging the existential question: who is affecting who? Denying Cartesian mea- sures of humans’ relationship to nature, Braathen draws on Edward Munch’s interest in inward and outward realities to inform her practice, utilising the human figure as a vehicle for emotional expedition. Oftentimes, she will channel an individual she knows who holds a deep, sustaining relation- ship with nature to her vistas in an attempt to access a more psychological palette.

As the sun casts her shadows over the can- vas, mountainous plains morph into throbbing sea anem- one, time speeds up and slows down, gusts of wind eddy thoughts and put them down again. The more surreal and atmospheric the landscape becomes, the more attentive Braathen is to nature’s enchantment, transience, and unpre- dictability.

Melinda Braathen (b. 1985, Oslo, Norway) lives and works in Los Angeles. She earned her BFA from Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY, US in 2007. Her up- coming and recent exhibitions include solo shows at Baert Gallery, Los Angeles, CA, US (2024); Charged Bodies, Golsa, Oslo, Norway (2023); Alice Folker, Copenhagen, Denmark (2023); Currents, Baert Gallery, Los Angeles, CA, US (2022). Her work is included in numerous collections, including in the USA, United Kingdom, Switzerland, Norway, Greece, Nigeria, and United Arab Emirates.

Golsa is delighted to present a duo exhibition showcasing the paintings of the Norwegian-American artist Melinda Braathen and the ceramic vessels of Danish artist Karl Monies. 

Join us for the opening of the exhibition on Thursday, April 20th from 18.00 until 20.00. 

"Charged Bodies" incorporates a reference to both artists' practices: the electrifying quality of Braathen's paintings which pulsate with energy, representing abstracted visions of nature, people, and other forms, and on the other hand: the arcane vessels of Karl Monies, embodying the potency of preserving, of housing precious matter within, or keeping it from coming out.

The landscape paintings of Melinda Braathen toe the line of abstraction and figuration, emerging from the artist's quest to reflect on her experiences and observations of the external and internal world. This new body of work incorporates several larger-scale and smaller-format paintings rendered in the artist’s recognizable mode of expression. Often starting with a specific reference from the real world, the works pass through several stages of interpretation that filter through different worlds of perception of reality: the sensory, the emotional, and the intellectual; this process invariably results in the abstraction of the original motif. Through layering perspectives, Braathen weaves different interpretations of the world into her works, imbuing them with varying meanings.

The choices Braathen makes regarding her technique significantly impact our perception — small brush strokes suggest impermanence and a swift, syrupy quality of ever-changing states represented through them. These features melt and meld, contrasted by opaquely painted surfaces that add stability, duetting more closely with representation. Thus, the planes of vibrant, bold color and brushstrokes spill across the canvas, partly framed by a few stable structures that cannot hold this energy in place. Many of Braathen's works feature water currents and powerful streams. The artist gives water, a symbol of life and nature's energy, notably human-like qualities of character and autonomy. It's as if, for Braathen, the human form and psyche are embodied through water masses.

The use of color likewise denotes that Braathen’s landscapes may well be renditions of the mind more so than those of the eye. It is the emotional aspects of perception that are at play here. Thus the woods in Soundscaper(2023) becomes ominous through the subtle tonal shift from purple to red. Suggesting an unknown danger just outside the line of vision, an unknown threat, the artist doubles down on this feeling through the introduction of the fallen tree motif. The tree dominates the composition, breaking it up diagonally. And yet it is in the choice of color that Braathen delivers the most decisive impact, transforming the otherwise calm woodland setting depicting the life cycle into an emotionally compelling scene depicting a growing uncertainty. 

We find the need to represent different planes of existence and states of mind through color in the artist’s other works. In Light Builds (2023), for example, through the tonal omnipresence of red, the artist manifests the state our body may be in after a long walk across a dry landscape on a sunny day – pulsating with heat, warm and vascular. This vision explores our body's sensory input, which the artist does not present as contrary to the senses we tend to perceive as more objective, such as sight. Quite the contrary, Braathen allows different states of perception to intermingle. These different states increase each other's vigor through pure connection and enable access to a heightened sense of being.

Some of Braathen's paintings suggest other life processes, as in the case of Body of Water (2022), a painting that almost seems to be breathing. This abstract depiction of a spring, a course of water, and underwater plant and animal life is, in fact, an abundance of organic matter. The intensity of tonality and contrast between deep reds and bright yellows give inklings of biological structures and vital functions, even internal organs or cellular processes - drawing from the notion that, further than biophilia, the natural world, which humans are a part of, is deeply interconnected. In this manner, the artist draws parallels between internal and external biological processes and structures.

Amongst the aura of unbounded energy in Melinda Braathen's paintings, the ceramic works of Karl Monies can be found. Each a unique piece, varying in color, shape, and size, these glazed stoneware pieces carry the potency of vessels for containment. Monies arranges ceramic jugs, jars, stoppered vases, and pots before us, making them functional – intentionally narrowing the gap between artistic expression and practical design thinking. Still, the materiality and form of Monies' works trigger a string of associations that are inadvertently tied to history, art history, and cultural and social practices of different peoples all around the planet. The artist clues us into this way of thinking by referencing various historical and artistic periods in his work, from ancient and prehistoric shapes to modernist and brutalist-type vessels.

Using clay as a conduit for a universal language of communication, Karl Monies activates its properties as a material we relate to on a primordial level. Clay is drawn from the earth, and so it is abundant. Its abundance makes it inclusive – of different cultures, people, lifestyles, and times. Throughout history, people have used ceramic works as containers for food, oil, and wine in various ceremonies and funerary rites. This universal appeal provides fertile ground for Monies to go on a free roam across different eras and allow himself to be inspired by ideas that harken back millennia and those that spring up in the present moment, decidedly contemporary.

A standout feature of Monies' vessels is reflected in the array of multi-colored climbing ropes the artist wraps around their handles and other parts as if to adorn (or bind), placing them firmly within a contemporary context. The ropes denote the present-day quality of the works, in contrast with the traditional aspects of ceramic as a material and its primordial use. Another denotative aspect of the colorful ropes can be found in the promise of protection. It is no coincidence that the artist selects climbing ropes in particular – an unpretentious material that, in fact, plays an essential role in preserving life and facilitates a safe journey for climbers. Ropes are practical and robust; they do not imitate anything or claim to be more than what they are. What you see is what you get. And so there is within their employment, as in the case of clay, a clue about the artist’s need to practice modesty and unassuming charm.

Though shapes and sizes differ, some aspects of Monies' works remain constant. One is the climbing rope, and the other is the oversized cork cap closing the openings at the top. The thought of what might be stored inside Monies' hand-crafted vessels may be as captivating as their surface. The cork tops sealing each vessel suggest that something may be contained within already – denoting both the works' functionality and its cryptic quality. The more obscure aspects of the works concern their capacity to not only hold their cargo but also to protect what is on the outside from the contents of their form. The fact that the containers are sealed asserts a note of warning - either what is within is precious, or it ought to remain there for its own and the good of others. In this manner, the vessels function as the proverbial Pandora's box (or rather, Pandora's jar, which is the correct translation of the Greek word pithos), raising questions about desire, ownership, and the consequences of our actions. Conversely, they can be seen as capsules within which precious energy is stored, representing small worlds, hosting their very own circulatory system, a power that remains in constant flux, reconfigured repeatedly.

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Melinda Braathen (b.1985) is a Norwegian-American painter based in Los Angeles, USA. Braathen’s painting seamlessly transitions between elements of skillful figuration and expressively ambient abstraction. This blending of genres, traditions, and techniques imbues the artist’s work with a unique sensibility that melds close observation of both nature and human dynamics with the theatricality and acute emotional attunement of pure expressionism. 
 
Melinda Braathen has earned her BFA from Bard College. Her recent exhibitions and projects include Art Paris 2023, Paris (2023), Currents, Baert Gallery, LA (2022), Summer Group Exhibition, Baert Gallery, LA (2021), UNTITLED Art Fair, Miami Beach (2020), Works on Paper, Baert Gallery, LA (2020), Sluice Over the Braids Sweet Forming, curated by Kim Garcia, Eastside International, LA (2019), and Color Is An Act Of Reason, Baert Gallery, LA (2019).

Karl Monies (b. 1984) is a Danish artist based in Copenhagen, Denmark. His ongoing series of ceramic containers embraces design thinking only to interrogate it and undermine it from within, resulting in a line of aesthetically compelling, esoterically symbolic, and deeply humane objects that seem both ancient and hyper-contemporary, silly and sublime. A trained painter, Monies is somewhat of a stranger to utilitarian design objects, which he approaches with the naïveté of an amateur, a humble student. 

Karl Monies earned his BFA from the Slade School of Fine Arts and subsequently took up a residency at Bangkok University. His recent exhibitions include ARCANA and CAMO at Etage Projects, Le Hasard et la Nécessité” at the CCA in Andratx, Mallorca, “Masters of Laurels” at Rumpelstiltskin, New York.

PLATFORM: MAY 2022

I’m really honored to have been selected by Platform to share four new works for their online e-commerce destination for the Month of MAY 2022!

Platform is the online destination for buying art by today's most sought-after artists. Each month, Platform offers a curated selection of around 90 new artworks to buy now, selected in partnership with David Zwirner and presented by leading gallery partners across the country.

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 CURRENTS

Opening on Saturday, March 26, 2022 from 5 to 8 pm

AT BAERT GALLERY

Baert Gallery is pleased to present Currents, an exhibition of new work by Melinda Braathen. 

 In both her paintings and drawings, Braathen seamlessly transitions between elements of skillful figuration and expressively ambient abstraction. This blending of genres, traditions, and technique imbues her work with a unique sensibility that melds close observation of nature and human dynamics with theatricality and acute emotional attunement. Braathen’s work stills and materializes the flux of life’s constant becoming into a bodied abstraction of meditative paint swirled in masterful grooves of balanced coloration. 

The works in the show stem from the artist’s intention to utilize paint’s unique properties to freeze and transform moments of daily life so as to showcase the hidden properties and sensory currents running through their fiber. The way they formed briefchurchesover the table as he searched for the right words is inspired by a line from the poet Ocean Vuong's collection Night Sky with Exit Wounds. Here, the man seen on the right side of the painting is depicted struggling to form his thoughts or express something in just the right way, while his tablemates are engaged and listening in various degrees of attunement. The figure in the middle is fully occupied and is thus submerged in a blue, white, and yellow energetic pattern, to the extent that only its hand and the outline of its head can be clearly distinguished. The woman seated to the figure’s right (our left), meanwhile, is disengaged, and thus not buttressing the discussion at all, surrounded by her own distinct coloristic aura. “I am interested in exploring how a deeper kind of engaged listening can create brief and invisible architecture—the one we can feel but not necessarily see,” Braathen notes of the painting.

Voyaginginto both real and psychic wilderness along with the subjects of her paintings, Braathen subverts the traditional figure-ground relationship, questioning the boundaries of sovereign personhood and the living environment. 

In time, In tempo (After Tarkovsky’s Stalker)and Some sweetness or sharpness in the air (After Tarkovsky’s Stalker) borrow their compositions from stilled frames of Andrei Tarkovsky’s 1979 eponymous film. In the film, a Stalker is someone especially skilled in guiding others into forbidden and mysterious zones of alien fauna where nature has ceased to behave in biologically predictable ways. In time, In tempo captures a moment in the narrative where the protagonist kneels in high vegetation and finds stillness, connecting with the Zone’s sui generis landscape. To this view Braathen adds depictions of real-life medicinal flowers and herbs known for their curative properties, such as borage and echinacea to insinuate the plants’ hidden life force, and their ability to communicate and interact with human organisms. That concern with the flowing forces and invisible auratic currents—as well as painting’s unique ability to embody, highlight, and engage them in composition—also runs through Some sweetness or sharpness in the air. In this work, the forbidden Zone travelers are depicted in subdued exhaustion, simultaneously respectfully probing their surroundings for their reactions and submitting to them. “I'm exploring and playing with the ways our psychology affects our environment,” Braathen notes of the piece, “The yellow ‘force’ moves through and around the figures. It is unclear if they feel it or sense it, but the surrounding environment is noticeably transforming, and their own contours are shifting and blurring with it”. 

Similarly, in works like Skogen and Mornings that remember sunsets Braathen creates richly layered landscapes that seem to exist at the borderline between dream, extrasensory perception, and real life. For the artist, drawing from nature is a way of bridging these elements in a single, unified space: a way to body forth the reality of the world that is often far stranger and more intense and alive than our best thoughts can ever reach, while addressing the frightening unpredictability and the constantly shifting essence of our reality. Based on a single photograph taken by the artist of a forest bathed in sunlight, this large-scale painting gives form to currents that manifest through nature in its unadulterated state. Braathen was originally struck by the vitality and kaleidoscopic richness of the depicted scene’s reverberating sunlight. In creating the piece, she had first deliberately decolorized the original photo, and after meticulously transferring the contours of the landscape to canvas, filled it anew with more emotionally and psychologically charged, strikingly radiant colors, highlighting the richness and density of living landscape’s suspended motion through its expressive solidification in paint.

Melinda Braathen (b. 1985, Oslo, Norway) lives and works in Los Angeles. She has studied painting at the New York Studio School and received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Bard College. Her works have been exhibited in galleries both nationally and internationally including Baert Gallery, Los Angeles; Untitled Art, Miami Beach OVR; Eastside International, Los Angeles; Last Projects, Los Angeles; Coaxial Gallery, Los Angeles; Kwadrat, Berlin, Germany; Masterworks Foundation, Bermuda.

Melinda Braathen, Mornings that remember sunsets, 2022, oil on canvas, 60 x 60 in (152.4 x 152.4 cm).

SUMMER GROUP EXHIBITION

Baert Gallery

July 24 - September 18, 2021

Baert Gallery is pleased to present a Summer Group Exhibition featuring Melinda Braathen, Paolo Colombo, Pam Evelyn, Reuben Gordon, Iliodora Margellos, Francesca Mollett, Jebila Okongwu and Sophie Wahlquist. This group show which includes paintings, ceramics and works on paper showcases new and historic works by eight international and Los Angeles-based artists

Out Now - Summer 2021

The Light Observer Magazine

The Water Issue

with guest artist Melinda Braathen

THE WATER ISSUE

Order
The Light Observer - click here
Baert Gallery - click here

The Light Observer is an independent magazine published twice a year, with an international distribution through selected bookstores, museum shops, concept stores and online shops.

With a unique and exciting editorial line, the magazine investigates our relationship with light through in-depth articles and interviews - mixing upcoming and well-known artists, photographers, architects, scientists.

In this issue, light is explored through water. The deep ocean – mysterious and compelling – is where we start, interviewing the oceanographer Séverine Martini about bioluminescent organisms and the role light playsat depths of over 200 metres. This interview is juxtaposed alongside photographs taken by Nicolas Floc’h. The photographer captures the colour of water: blue and greenmonochromes shot below the surface, whichbring to mind the work of Yves Klein, James Turrell orAnn Veronica Janssens. We interviewed the latter about her rich and sensitive relationship with light, and how light and liquids interact with each other. In the archives, we found illustrations by a 19th-century French entomologist depicting bioluminescent creatures,which we then contextualised with today’s information and scientific discoveries.

Our guest artist Melinda Braathen reinterpreted the myth of Icarus, inspired by a poem by William Carlos Williams, creating a colourful series of pencil and pastel drawings for the magazine, fully expressing her abstract visual language. Sanae Nicolas also interpreted a poem for us, a haiku by Teijo Nakamura. Her illustration depicts a fishing boat –at night, in the midst of a deluge –equipped with a strong light to draw cuttlefish up from the depths.

UNTITLED, ART Miami Beach OVR 2020
with works by
Melinda Braathen, Reuben Gordon & Sophie Wahlquist.

December 2 – 6, 2020
Beginning at 8am PT, 11am ET

VIP
December 1, 2020

BAERT GALLERY

Works on Paper
Melinda Braathen, Paolo Colombo, 
Reuben Gordon, Dene Leigh, Daniel Silva, 
Sophie Wahlquist



OPENING RECEPTION 
Saturday February 8, 2020

6 – 9 PM

2441 Hunter Street, Los Angeles, CA 90021

In the November of 2018, twelve California-based artists formed an online critique group – The Cold Read – in order to develop a conversation across diverse practices; Every two weeks a presenting artist uploaded texts, images, or time-based media and the non-presenting members had seven days to form a written response. The works on view in sluice over the braids sweet forming stem directly from this engagement.

As a nod to the supportive critique structure that drove the first year of The Cold Read, the works are installed in close proximity to each other: embracing, teasing, coaxing, and, in short, modifying one another.

Featured artists: Melinda Braathen, Rachel Borenstein, Lawrence Chit, Yerrie Choo, Kim Garcia, Gosia Herc, Amy Mackay, Joshua Ross - Amoral Poem, Estelle Srivijittakar, Elizabeth Stringer, Reinhart Selvik, and Christina Tsui

Color is an Act of Reason - Group Show at Baert Gallery

Baert Gallery — August 3 - September 14, 2019

Color is An Act of Reason

“Color is uncontainable. It effortlessly reveals the limits of language and evades our best attempts to impose a rational order on it... To work with color is to become acutely aware of the insufficiency of language and theory – which is both disturbing and pleasurable.” (David Batchelor)

Baert Gallery is pleased to present “Color is an act of reason,” a group exhibition featuring Jasmin Blasco, Melinda Braathen, Francesca Gabbiani, Reuben Gordon, Amy Mackay, Iliodora Margellos and Jebila Okongwu. The show as a whole is evocative of the luminous world of Bonnard. The title “Color is an act of reason” is pulled from the artist himself, who often utilized color as a response to the psychological nature of his work. 

 Much like Bonnard’s work, the driving force of color unifies the exhibition. Although intensely personalized in regards to aesthetics, all artists experiment assiduously with color—a unifying linchpin in a celebration of chromatic expression. Color is apparent in each artist’s versatile applications, evoking memories of past intertwined with present. Apart from the obvious emphasis on a spectrum of vibrant hues, this show engages one through various shapes, rhythms and emotions. Together the artists’ use of vivid evocative colors captures moments in time, creating portals into other worlds and inviting us to see spectrums otherwise lost. 

 Avery Wheless

Los Angeles, August 2019