LOS ANGELES, CA.- Sascha Braunig has for over a decade devoted her critical focus to the capaciousness and limitations of the feminine form under duress. Braunig’s figures inhabit teetering studies in overextension—waists and fulcra are pinched to extremity; appendages are restricted or decked in barbs; phantom silhouettes sinuously negotiate and adapt to the contours of their technicolor environments. Drawing on feminist artistic discourse, Braunig’s imaginaries engage the postures through which gender performance and systems of power are replicated; training, fitting, and reinforcement are recurring motifs in the severe and sometimes sinister crucibles which Braunig’s figures endure. Cast in vibrant complementary palettes and anchored through Braunig’s graphic, tensile formal vocabulary, her images recapitulate and usurp foundational codes of gendered visuality to create scenes both surreal and unequivocally emblematic. Braunig’s practice wrenches at the boundaries of form and performance in gendered space.

Sascha Braunig (b. Qualicum Beach, BC, Canada, 1983) lives and works in Portland, Maine. She holds a BFA from The Cooper Union and an MFA in painting from Yale University. Braunig's upcoming solo museum exhibition Lay Figure opens on October 2 at Oakville Galleries, Ontario, Canada. 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 Lay Figure (2022) at François Ghebaly, New York and Magenta Plains, New York; The Crease (2018) at Office Baroque, Brussels; Bad Latch (2017) at Atlanta Contemporary, Atlanta; Free Peel (2017) at Foxy Production, New York; and Shivers (2016) at MoMA PS1, New York. Institutional group exhibitions include the Quebec City Biennial; Oakville Galleries, Ontario; Portland Museum of Art, Portland, ME; White Cube, London; National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne; Aïshti Foundation, Beirut; Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland; and the New Museum Triennial, New York. In Fall 2023, Braunig will have a solo exhibition at François Ghebaly, Los Angeles.