STATEMENT
My paintings are diagrammatic color games, a study of evolving systems at the intersection of order and cacophony. I draw from geometries of the color wheel, infusing color with the poetics of math as a language for understanding reality. Numbers, both random and algorithmic, are the infrastructure of each painting. Ongoing stratified number sequences, randomization processes, prime number sieves, and logical geometries all tie numbers to colors. These systems are consistent by nature, but their visual outcomes are unexpected.
Color is defined by change and unpredictability. Each instance of color is radically shifted by its surroundings. Physiological adjustment changes the experience of color through time. Color theory mechanics generate vibrating fields of simultaneous contrast. The eye fuses particulate colors at a distance to form the impression of new colors. With the ongoing development of pigments, optical and physical mixtures evolve through time, so the foundation of color theory itself is always shifting and changing.
My hearing loss has affixed a linguistic aspect to color. Ubiquitous colors (red, yellow, blue) don’t have to be physically experienced to be cognitively summoned. When these identities are buttressed by pattern, a painting becomes a predictive system, a map. Patterns filtered through disintegrating algorithms are like utterances with missing information, requiring predictive maps to synthesize noise into meaning. Colors behave like packets of sound, as systems create the legible image. When missing information collapses pattern into glitch, the visual field oscillates between recognition and chaos.
Geometry has long been employed to facilitate spiritual experiences. It augments visions of deeper meaning in reality, while subverting damaging iconographies that enable violent hierarchy and false division. It fuses the mathematical wonder of cosmology, time, particle behavior, with the intimate and psychological. Suspending judgment, while playing with the forms of math and logic, observing color’s instability and the limits of language, is alchemical and transformative.
ABOUT
Brianna Bass (1990) earned her MFA from Yale School of Art in 2022, and BFA in Painting and Drawing from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga in 2013. Recent solo exhibitions include “Ex Nihilo” at Red Arrow Gallery in Nashville, TN, “Scattering the Constant” at Latchkey Gallery in NYC, “Penumbra” in Naples, Italy. Notable group shows include “Considering Female Abstraction” with Green Family Art Foundation, “Transcendental & Beyond” in Santa Fe alongside Agnes Martin and Agnes Peleton, and “Vibrant Matters” at Jeffery Deitch Gallery in NYC. She has presented lectures at Missouri State University, Pratt Institute, Yale University, and University of Louisville in KY. She has exhibited work nationally and internationally at Jeffrey Deitch Gallery (NY), Latchkey Gallery (NY), Noh-Art in Naples, Italy, Ojiri Gallery in London, and Tree Art Museum in Beijing, China. Her work has been featured at art fairs Untitled Art in Miami, FL and EXPO Chicago, and her work is part of major international collections including Morgan Stanley, the Esposito Collection, and Jimenez-Colon Collection, as well as collections in Dubai, Milan, and Tokyo. She keeps a studio practice in rural Connecticut while maintaining professional presence in New York City.