Sascha Braunig: Lay Figure

Sascha Braunig: Lay Figure
Oakville Galleries in Gairloch Gardens and at Centennial Square
October 2–December 30, 2022

For the fall exhibition season, Oakville Galleries is thrilled to present Lay Figure, a solo exhibition of work by Portland, Maine-based artist Sascha Braunig (born Qualicum Beach, BC, Canada, 1983). Exercises in colour, form, and illusion, Braunig’s works cite an artistic lineage that stretches from the Pictures Generation through to the Chicago Imagists and horror-movie practical effects. Her sometimes barbed, tubular, netted, or neon-lit forms speak of many of the tensions of the current moment, such as being a subject within the grid of digital or gender systems.

For her first solo exhibition at a museum in Canada, the artist brings together new and recent paintings and drawings that are based on the compositional motif of figures engaged in conflict with a dress-like structure. These works use material qualities to analogize an immaterial idea: the feeling of struggling with a system more powerful than you, in which you are also deeply entangled. 

Also included in the exhibition is a display of the three-dimensional models she builds and uses as visual aids in the making of each large painting. Because of this observational painting practice, Braunig sees her work as being linked to the academic 19th-century painter’s use of the “lay figure,” a jointed doll, not quite to-scale, that artists used as a stand-in for a live model in the studio. Lay Figure, the title of the show, refers to this historical practice, but the artist extends its meaning to the schematic wiry figure that recurs in her recent work. Braunig imagines the lay figure coming into its own life, pushing against a system in which it is also embedded and resisting its status as the inanimate muse in patriarchal painting’s history.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a publication of new writing on the work of Sascha Braunig, published by Oakville Galleries in partnership with Triangle Books, Belgium. Contributors include curator Frances Loeffler and artist Lucy Kim.

The opening reception will be held on Sunday, October 2 at Centennial Square (2–3:30pm) and in Gairloch Gardens (3:30–5pm). All are welcome. For related public programming, please visit oakvillegalleries.com for updated information.

About Oakville Galleries 
Oakville Galleries is a contemporary art museum located 30 km west of Toronto. Housed in two spaces—one alongside a public library in downtown Oakville, and another in a lakeside mansion and park—Oakville Galleries is one of Canada’s leading art museums, with a primary commitment to presenting the work of early and mid-career artists from across Canada and around the world. 

Oakville Galleries is located on Treaty Lands and Territory of the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation and the traditional territory of the Huron-Wendat and the Haudenosaunee. As an institution, Oakville Galleries recognizes the importance of establishing and maintaining meaningful and respectful relationships with the original inhabitants and keepers of the land, and we are grateful for the opportunity to operate on this territory.

Oakville Galleries operates with support from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, the Ontario Trillium Foundation and the Corporation of the Town of Oakville.

For press enquiries and additional information, please contact:
Melanie Lowe
Marketing & Communications Manager
melanie@oakvillegalleries.com