Sascha Braunig is currently working on series of paintings organized around the idea of the “lay figure,” a jointed doll that 19th century painters used as a stand-in for live models in the studio. In this series, she imagines the lay figure coming into a life of its own, squirming to free itself from rigid systems and resisting its status as the inanimate muse in patriarchal painting’s history. In repeated scenes of conflict and entanglement, these works use the material qualities of observational painting to analogize an immaterial idea: the feeling of struggling with systems more powerful than you (in which you are also deeply embedded.)
Braunig was awarded a studio residency from the Sharpe-Walentas Studio Program, a Pollock-Krasner Foundation award, and two MacDowell Fellowships. Recent solo exhibitions include "Lay Figure," Oakville Galleries, Ontario (2022); "Lay Figure," François Ghebaly and Magenta Plains, New York (2022); "The Crease," Office Baroque, Belgium (2018); and "Free Peel," Foxy Production, NY (2017). Past solos include "Bad Latch," Atlanta Contemporary (2017); "Shivers," MOMA PS1 (2016); and "Torsion," Kunsthall Stavanger, Norway (2015).
At MacDowell in 2013 Sascha finished three paintings, one to be exhibited at Maine College of Art's ICA in a faculty show, and the other two to be shown at NADA Miami Beach 2013. All three paintings were made using a combination of direct observation of sculptural models and fantastical, invented details. They are part of a series exploring the representation of the female figure and its interaction with the painting frame.
While in residency in 2023, Sascha made a group of small paintings that will serve as studies for larger works to be exhibited at François Ghebaly gallery in Los Angeles in fall 2023. These works will continue a series she began in 2020 that envision tense and prickly figures engaged in struggle or entanglement with dress-like garments and other formal elements that represent normative gender messaging. Works from these shows will be collected in a forthcoming catalog, published by Oakville Galleries with Triangle Books, Belgium (she worked on this book in its final stages while at MacDowell).
