February 2, 2012 - July 30, 2012
Philadelphia artist Arden Bendler Browning is known for her large-scale, highly energized, gestural paintings inspired by her urban surroundings. Browning’s paintings are mostly abstract, yet include hints of realism with the suggestion of architectural structures, roadways, telephone poles, and green spaces. Browning’s paintings envelop the viewer with their scale, intensity, and sense of movement. Her imagery is derived from photos taken while traversing the city combined with Google aerials and street views. These multiple sources enable her to see the city from various vantage points and, as she has described, “jump through time and space.”
Browning’s paintings visually capture that sense of timelessness as she often conveys a disorienting landscape where colors and shapes collide and overlap, where only glimpses of reality come into focus. She speaks of the urban environment as “a vast sea of fluctuating boundaries arguing claim to the demarcation of space.” This statement also describes Browning’s work as she depicts the urban landscape using an amalgam of colors, shapes, and painterly marks adrift, influx, and unsettled.
