NEW YORK, NY.- Sargent’s Daughters is presenting No Living, an exhibition of paintings by New York based artist Brandi Twilley. This is Twilley’s third solo show with the gallery and is on view from Wednesday, August 5th through September 13, 2020. The exhibition marks the gallery’s return to its physical space since its closure due to the Covid-19 crisis in March 2020, when Twilley’s show was originally set to open.
No Living presents Twilley’s first series of works set in New York City. The exhibition features a series of oil paintings and a collage wall of oil on canvas sketches, all depicting the artist’s early years living in NYC studios.
Upon her arrival to New York City, Twilley, short on cash, moved into an art studio rather than an apartment. The Craigslist ad for the studio space stated: “No Living.” The space was 120 square feet - no shower, kitchen or private bathroom. Twilley bathed at the gym, microwaved her dinner, and hid from her landlord. In the beginning, she thought living in her studio would be temporary, but it went on for years, studio after studio. Over time, she adjusted to this way of life.
Twilley paints herself and her life from both first and third-person perspectives, presenting isolated glimpses of sleep, restlessness, painting, and quotidian activities. It is an unnerving and intimate psychological experience to witness the artist’s private moments from a voyeur’s perspective, while also knowing it is the artist herself who presents these moments to us.
Twilley often had anxiety dreams that an intruder would invade her space to find her sleeping. In “Reoccurring Dream of the Opening Door” the nightmare begins with the light streaming in. She may have been sleeping in her studio, but she lived mostly in her head. As viewers, we feel the intrusion - both as intruders coming upon these isolated, personal moments and as the intruded-upon depicted in the paintings, apprehensive of discovery.
The paintings included in the exhibition’s collage wall were painted over the course of three years. They are quick one-shot paintings made on the cut-up remains of failed paintings and show the cycle of painting, living, sleeping, and dreaming. They open a rare window into an artist’s private world in a particular moment in time – one that, through Twilley’s straightforward method of storytelling, universally resonates and reverberates, allowing us to enter that space with her.
Brandi Twilley (b. 1982, Oklahoma City, OK) lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. She received her MFA from Yale University, New Haven, CT in 2011 and has recently exhibited at Zero Gallery, Milan, Italy; The Museum of Sex, New York, NY and Kate Werble Gallery, New York, NY. This is her third solo exhibition at Sargent’s Daughters. Her work has been reviewed in The New York Times, ARTFORUM, ARTnews, The Art Newspaper, The New Yorker, Artnet News, Time Out, The Observer, and Hyperallergic, among other publications. She is represented by Sargent’s Daughters.
