Berlin-based artist Jenny Brosinski describes her work as a ‘fleeting encounter’ with something incomplete, or a meeting of the ‘superficial with spontaneity’. Her art presents concepts deconstructed into fragments, gestures in oil, charcoal, ash and pencil united on canvas.
Brosinski’s paintings are open and expressive, her mark-making infused with the spirit of Cy Twombly and Robert Rauschenberg. Swathes of color wash her canvases with cerulean and sunshine yellow, which are broken up by letters, smudges and scribbles in all manner of media. This artist’s work is reminiscent of automatic drawing in its spontaneity, but is reigned in by a Brosinksi’s inclination towards deconstruction.
Communicating in a language that is two degrees removed from what is familiar, Brosinski’s canvases return our words to us in disjointed new ways. Her paintings are (de)constructed through fragments that invite the viewer to (re)build meaning from shapes and syllables. The words, ‘I will never comment that shit’ appear under erasure in one painting, a knowing nod to deconstruction. ‘To’, declares another, destination unknown. These phrases often materialise from interviews and documentaries that Brosinski plays whilst painting, words that re-emerge, reconfigured, into fresh context.
Despite the simplicity of this artist’s work, it is capable of expressing varied emotional range. Brosinski’s paintings are both humorous, as in the deformed patchwork garms of The Wrong Trouser (2020), and enigmatic, as in the millennial pink mysteries of >No One Needs To Know(2017).
Brosinski’s work invites us to approach with a light heart and an open mind, building our own meanings before the canvas.
