Lichtenberg Figure

Polina Berlin Gallery is pleased to present Lichtenberg Figure, the gallery’s debut exhibition with multidisciplinary artist Brian DeGraw. As a visual artist, musician and DJ, DeGraw has developed a singular practice centered around improvisation and sampling, folding myriad stylistic devices, as well as cultural and autobiographical references, into each work. Lichtenberg Figure comprises a body of paintings in which the artist finds himself rethinking his approach to figuration, shifting closer toward a mode of freewheeling abstraction and intuitive graphic interplay. To complement the exhibition, DeGraw has organized a series of live performances with his colleagues and fellow musicians hosted at the gallery, which will unfold throughout the show’s duration. Encompassing his music and visual art practice, DeGraw’s method is rooted in the improvised assemblage of materials both found and created by the artist. Fragments of text, images of anthropological objects, album cover art, and original sketches are all among the source materials embedded within the painting’s architecture, and like the process of his music making, the aggregation is purely spontaneous. Resisting any kind of categorization, his paintings oscillate between the structured elements of representation and the instinctive happenstance of abstraction. Collaged-like layers of visual references, lyrical undertones, and transcendental patterns are culled together in a generative balance between free association and methodical revision. The works that emerge from this orderly process unearth latent connections and memories that reflect the diversity and whim of the lived experience. DeGraw’s impulse for improvisation that lies beneath each composition can become a touch point for the relationship between music and life, art and music, and life and art. DeGraw begins by applying a layer of heavily diluted acrylic and flashe and letting it take form and harden into a tactile base layer. This improvised ground becomes the site of formal excavation: using a distinctly hard-edged top-layer, DeGraw lets faces, instruments, geometric shapes and hints of natural life emerge in a state of rhythmic entanglement. Much like his musical process, in which synths, drums, piano trills or frantic booms are let to form their own continuity, the assemblages refuse to be reduced to an easily recognizable authorial hand. Instead, each composition thrums with the unpremeditated desire toward discovery that guided it. As in Harpist (after LMB), a marbled pastel ground is treated with maroon and grisaille oil. A knelt-down figure materializes at the center of the picture, maybe praying, but the medley of abstract negations begins to cohere: the knelt-down woman appears to be surrounded by trees, plucking the strings of a harp. From under the veneer of hard-edged abstraction, something like a Trecento fresco emerges. “Lichtenberg figures are not made, they are received”, DeGraw said when discussing the title of the show. In DeGraw’s practice, nature assumes the role of the artist – the way it produces, strikes and lives without authorship or correction. The body, like the raw canvas, becomes a passive ground, and his quiet process of painting becomes permitting rather than controlling. The collection of works in the exhibition mirrors the spiritual ideas of the artist as a vessel rather than the creator, allowing questions about will, chance and identity to come to the fore. Brian DeGraw (b. 1974, Meriden, Connecticut) lives and works in New York. He has recently presented solo exhibitions at James Fuentes, Los Angeles (2024), and New York (2022, 2011, 2007); Soccer Club Club, Chicago (2023); Wish-Less, Tokyo, Japan (2019), and Allen & Eldridge, New York (2015). He most recently presented a two-person exhibition alongside Maria Naveriani at Tanya Leighton, Berlin, Germany (2024). His work has been included in group exhibitions at Polina Berlin Gallery, New York (2024); Pace Gallery, New York (2023, 2022); Gallery Artbeat, Tbilisi, Georgia (2023); Galerie Julien Cadet, Paris, France (2023), amongst others. His work has been presented in institutional exhibitions at The Jewish Museum, New York (2015); Macro Future Museum, Rome, Italy (2009); Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (in the 2008 Whitney Biennial); Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna, Austria (2007); and Deste Foundation, Athens, Greece (2007, 2006). DeGraw’s work resides in the public and private collections of The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Dakis Joannou Collection; Agnés B Collection; Zabludowicz Collection; LAC Collection; Madeira Corporate Services Collection; and Ragnarock Museum, Roskilde, Denmark. DeGraw is a founding member of the experimental music group Gang Gang Dance. Notable performances with Gang Gang Dance include The Museum of Modern Art: Judson Dance Theater; 88 Boadrum; Sydney Opera House; Pitti Uomo; Brandt Foundation; and the Brooklyn Academy of Music, in collaboration with Alice Coltrane.

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