Sascha Braunig & Greg Parma Smith

Opening Reception: Saturday, September 14, 6 - 8 pm

François Ghebaly New York is proud to present a two-person exhibition of new paintings by Sascha Braunig and Greg Parma Smith.

Artists Sascha Braunig and Greg Parma Smith are meticulous image-smiths. Guided by demanding technical and conceptual methodologies, each is as interested in matters of surface, shade, and modeling as in the perceptual and ideological factors that undergird the image itself. In her work, Braunig looks to consider and critique connections between visual iconography and processes of gendered socialization or reinforcement. Tension, constraint, and other elements of visual pressure inform both the choreographies of her feminized figures and their deceptively playful environments. Parma Smith, meanwhile, draws on legacies of Op art, classical decorative arts, and a bricolage of source materials and art historical traditions in his work. Through uncanny spatiality and inventive trompe-l'œil, he explores issues of visual representation, nonhuman space, and the perceptual and psychosomatic force that images enact on the viewer.

Together, Braunig and Parma Smith each present new oil paintings that feature key leitmotifs from their respective practices. The notion of a perceptual “third space” becomes a compelling overlap in both artists’ work. In a broad sense, the third space encompasses the viewer’s role in activating an artwork or representative image, completing the circuit that allows the work to either visually or conceptually impress itself outside the bounds of the picture plane. Mechanically, the term can also describe the parallax view created during a viewer’s experience of an illusionistic image and their simultaneous awareness of the techniques and visual sleights of hand that generate the illusion in the first place. For example, when approached from the diagonal, Parma Smith’s chiseled, frieze-like surfaces slip into a certain perceptual limbo. Though the illusion of depth in his paintings is momentarily betrayed by the flat white borders of the canvas, his painstaking color and value modeling still fight to be read as dimensional. Similarly, Braunig’s primary color relationships and shallow, undulating spaces force an unreal and deliberately superficial perspective that only heightens the meticulously staged and stage-like character of her images. In either case, the third space becomes a unique account of each artist’s approach toward representation and the viewer. Braunig and Parma Smith’s works encourage an appreciation of the status of images and of the figures contained therein as always approximative and placeholding––shaped by and caught between maker, audience, referent, and latent ideology.

Sascha Braunig (b. 1983, Qualicum Beach, BC, Canada) lives and works in Portland, Maine. She holds a BFA from The Cooper Union and an MFA in painting from Yale University. Braunig was awarded a residency from the Sharpe-Walentas Studio Program in 2016, a Pollock-Krasner Foundation award in 2016, and a Macdowell Fellowship in 2013. Selected solo exhibitions include François Ghebaly, New York and Los Angeles, USA; Oakville Galleries, Ontario, Canada; Magenta Plains, New York, USA; Office Baroque, Brussels, Belgium; Atlanta Contemporary, Atlanta, USA; and MoMA PS1, New York, USA. Her work has been featured in institutional exhibitions including the Quebec City Biennial; Oakville Galleries, Ontario, Canada; Portland Museum of Art, Portland, USA; National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia; Aïshti Foundation, Beirut, Lebanon; Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland, Cleveland, USA; and the New Museum Triennial, New York, USA.

Greg Parma Smith (b. 1983, Massachusetts) lives and works in New York. Select solo, group, and institutional exhibitions include David Lewis, New York, USA; Swiss Consulate, New York, USA; Galerie Francesca Pia, Zürich, Switzerland; MoMA PS1, Long Island City, USA; Contemporary Art Museum, St. Louis, USA; Swiss Institute, New York, USA; Everest/Foundation Gutzwiller, Zurich, Switzerland; Kiev Biennial, Kiev, Ukraine; White Columns, New York, USA; Metro Pictures, New York, USA; Blum and Poe, Los Angeles, USA; Greene Naftali, New York, USA; Feredico Vavassori, Milan, Italy; and Miguel Abreu Gallery, New York, USA. Smith’s work is held in the collections of the Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, USA; Musée d’art moderne et contemporain (MAMCO) Genève, Geneva, Switzerland; ICA Miami, Miami, USA; Museum im Bellpark, Kriens, Switzerland; and Aïshti Foundation, Beirut, Lebanon. Smith was the subject of a mid-career survey, curated by Fabrice Stroun, at Musée d’art moderne et contemporain (MAMCO) Genève in 2017.