JUDITH BRAUN:
MAY I DRAW

OPENING RECEPTION SUN, MAR 3, 6-8PM
ON VIEW: MAR 3-APR 21

PRESS RELEASE

Joe Shef­tel Gallery is proud to present May I Draw, Judith Braun’s first solo exhi­bi­tion in New York since 2008. Braun’s process empha­sizes her posi­tion as a “quan­tum ampli­fier.” Uti­liz­ing three sim­ple rules to make her draw­ings – Sym­me­try, Abstrac­tion and Car­bon Medium – she is intent on cap­tur­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ties and prob­a­bil­i­ties of the quan­tum realm, where every­thing is in free fall until it is caught…by a viewer, or the artist.

Accord­ingly, Braun ini­ti­ates her draw­ing with abstract lines, free of defin­i­tive form. The abstrac­tion is then mir­rored to achieve sym­me­try, becom­ing pre­cise and orderly. Braun chooses car­bon medi­ums, graphite and char­coal, because these lim­ited mate­ri­als offer infi­nite gra­da­tions of light and dark. She is also attracted to carbon’s crys­talline mol­e­c­u­lar struc­ture, which under the right con­di­tions can become a dia­mond. Braun explains, “Work­ing within con­straints prompts a pro­lif­er­a­tion of pos­si­bil­i­ties that self-organize into groups and sub­groups, from which I then choose some to ren­der care­fully by hand, with dia­mond dust.”

This show presents draw­ings from the Por­tal, Orbital, Rim­ming and Lanter­nal group­ings, all part of Braun’s ongo­ing Sym­met­ri­cal Pro­ce­dures series. This series also includes her Fin­ger­ing works, in which Braun dips her fin­gers into char­coal and uses her body as the draw­ing instru­ment. Aware that the medium and her body are made of the same car­bon mate­r­ial, she exploits the nat­ural sym­me­tries of bod­ily ges­tures to cre­ate a vocab­u­lary of marks and pat­terns, seek­ing sur­prise through rep­e­ti­tion.

Judith Braun, then going by the name Judith Wein­per­son, first showed in New York in 1988 in Group Material’s Democ­racy show at Dia Art Foun­da­tion, fol­lowed by solo pre­sen­ta­tions at White Columns and On The Wall Gallery. In the early ’90s she par­tic­i­pated in shows at The Draw­ing Cen­ter, New York, curated by Ann Philbin; Art in Gen­eral, New York, curated by Holly Block; and Amer­i­can Fine Arts, New York, with Colin De Land, among many oth­ers. She was like­wise fea­tured in the Bad Girls show at the New Museum of Con­tem­po­rary Art, New York, curated by Mar­cia Tucker. More recently Braun has had solo shows at Fruit and Flower Deli, New York, and Galerie Con­rads in Düs­sel­dorf, Ger­many, and group shows in Spain, Vienna, and Berlin. She is cur­rently show­ing in Graphite at the Indi­anapo­lis Museum of Art.

For press inquiries and images, please con­tact the gallery at mail@joesheftelgallery.com.