WALKER BRENGEL
Hurry up please, it's time

Exhibition: February 24 - March 17, 2018
Opening: Friday February 23, 6-10 pm
Opening hours: Sat., 2-7 pm and by appointment
Address: Potsdamer Straße 118, 10785 Berlin, (in the backyard)

Left to dry.

I hang waiting
Waiting what’s next
Left for a task
A task of which i know not
I lay here motionless
Awaiting what’s due.
Accepting this uncertainty
Bound by a preexistence.
A habit I was born to.

I await.
The boredom wraps ahold
and the suffering dissolves.

Studio Picknick is pleased to present Walker Brengel‘s solo-exhibition Hurry Up Please, It‘s Time with new works from the Berlin-based artist.
At the center of his exhibition is a selection of seven works on canvas from Brengel‘s ongoing series Series G., which he began in 2017. In this series, the artist inquires into the structure of the painterly process through the increasingly reductive compositions and color palette of his works. In predominantly black and white paintings, he questions the traditional perceptions between fore- and background, plane and form. This culminates in the investigation of the relationship between contour and void.
Brengel works with several variations on a single composition, focusing on the balance of the form which is created and the area which is left free. The artist uses the format of the square canvas to paint a U-shaped contour along its edges, creating a frame around the monochrome backdrop. He highlights this exchange with painterly techniques, such as contrasting textures and even going so far as to cut into the painting to further exaggerate the notion of the void.
Brengel utilizes these cuts and alterations to additionally examine the medium of painting itself. The canvases are opened, untethered, and rearranged, exposed for their elements: stretcher, fabric, and pigment. The works become more sculptural, made up of the components of painting, and question not only the medium, but all of the meaning one imposes on it.
A core component in Brengel‘s body of work is the ongoing process of dealing with the theme of utilizing traditional means of painting to examine the possibility of reduction within the medium. The repetitive nature and simple execution of the series allows for him to reveal power dynamics between surfaces, textures, and shapes while simultaneously allowing subjective experience and feelings to flow into them. The manipulated and mangled canvas structures leave the viewers only with remnants of actions performed during or even after the painterly process.
Text: Nick Schulte

Walker Brengel was born in 1991 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He completed his studies at the Universität der Künste in Berlin in 2016, where he studied under Leiko Ikemura and Michael Müller. The artist lives and works in Berlin.