- This event has passed.
Fanny Brodar: It’s a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood
11 February 2023 - 23 March 2023
FreeEVENT DESCRIPTION
Valentine’s Day is a day for everyone to celebrate and honour different kinds of love. On view from 11th February to 23rd March, Nothing At All is proud to present a solo exhibition dedicated to Norwegian-born US-based artist Fanny Brodar whose artworks build on her complicated and nostalgic expressions associated with her own childhood, as well as her love for art throughout all these years. Entitled “It’s a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood”, the solo exhibition presents 15 unique paintings, each representing a unit, a chapter, or just a random day out of the countless days in one’s life, like a fragment of memory that tells a story of life filled with ups and downs. Contemplating life in a positive way especially in the face of the three-year pandemic, Fanny utilises her favourite muppet-like characters to emphasise the sense of community and support for people surrounding each other through the hard times.
Born in Oslo, Norway in 1971, Fanny spent her teenage life growing up in New York, and later earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts from The Art Institute of Boston while focusing on Illustration in her studies. However, not like the other artists who have a consistent trajectory, her career of an artist has only begun since her late 40s at the outbreak of the pandemic. As she reveals, “That was one of the darkest yet most beautiful periods of my life.” While secretly suffering from desperation and real-life struggles, she develops an obsession with painting to get away from this negativity as well as to pursue a “self” whom she has always wanted to be. During that time, she has been inspired by the other artists to pursue fine art which allows her to open herself to create without boundaries.
Her paintings are characterised by muppet-like subjects which resemble the classic cartoons such as Sesame Street from the 70s and Animaniacs from the 90s. In fact, they are the artist’s representations of her experience through a traumatic childhood and the many emotions she had as a child, and still have as an adult today. For her, it is not the details of the show she watched, or the things she experienced in her childhood, but the feelings and images associated with these seemingly surreal fragments of memories linger in her mind for many years.
Fanny’s faux naïf paintings lure the viewer into her made-up and magical world, like her childhood bedroom that became whatever she wanted simply by thinking it up. Realising there are humour and mischief in life, she builds these imaginative worlds on the nostalgic associations of the audience by creating these familiar characters from childhood, fashion trends, and pop culture through an “optimistic” perspective – sharing warm hugs and kisses, or just venting it out. Even for the darkest incidents that happened in her life, she accepts them and lets loose her emotions on the canvases, turning them into some of the brightest works she has produced with her illustrative style and favourite ways of painting like oil sticks and acrylic paints. Famous artists like Rose Wylie which revolve around childlike and cartoonish figures has been a key inspiration and foundation for the development of her concept.
The overjoyed atmosphere is not the only theme to be emphasised in this episode of “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood”, but also, and more importantly, the shared memories evoked by these nostalgic characters derived from the popular culture of a generation. As the artist stresses, it is unique to one generation, and it is “the fabric that meshed us together”. In her belief, people will be more likely attached to and learning about each other with a sense of belonging despite the constant isolation over the years of pandemic.
Fanny has featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions in major cities such as New York, Miami, Paris, Barcelona, Seoul, Taipei and Shanghai since 2020. She has been selected as featured artist in Scottish ArtNorth Magazine (Nos. 6 & 7) in 2020, and her works have been held in private collections worldwide. Nothing At All is pleased to present her first solo in Hong Kong with a series of 15 unique oil paintings together with 5 styles of limited-edition figures available for purchase.
You may also like
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.