AMBACH & RICE
TIM BRADEN: AGENCE DE VOYAGE
OPEN TO THE PUBLIC SEPTEMBER 8 – OCTOBER 13
6148 WILSHIRE BLVD, LOS ANGELES
AMBACH & RICE presents Agence de Voyage, British artist Tim Braden’s first solo exhibition in Los Angeles. Comprised of paintings informed by photographs from both friend’s albums and Braden’s own collection, the exhibit renders exotic locales and its visitors, effectively evoking escapist reverie and armchair anthropology. Can one comprehend a place through shared accounts or documentation? Conversely are one’s impressions upon encountering an unfamiliar locale accurate or projected, fictionalized or empirical? Braden explores these questions and more, like a travel agent playing exquisite corpse. His tangential impressions of countries such as Cambodia, Russia, and Brazil, depict scenes that span domestic scenes and utopian architecture, candid moments and touristic attempts at journalistic documentation.
Through painting and sculpture Braden extracts a patinated nostalgia. The paintings’ sanded surfaces peel away the lucidity of their photographic references, inverted exposures that endeavor to transform images into objects. Braden has long been preoccupied with the act of looking and the way in which it influences one’s relationship to a moment or place. Through sustained meditation Agence de Voyage pensively narrows the gap between primary and secondary sources. Braden’s paintings eschew Henri Cartier-Bresson’s decisive moment in favor of scenes that suggest narratives beyond the frame, trading the iconic for the enigmatic.
Tim Braden (born 1975) is an artist based in London. He studied at the Ruskin, Oxford and the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam. Recent exhibitions include Paleis van Decoratie, Galerie Juliette Jongma, Amsterdam, NL, The Possessed (curated by Dorothee Dupuis), HLM, Marseille, FR, Jorge Americano, Ludlow 38, New York, US and Weekend in Valmouth, (curated by Bruce Haines), Ancient and Modern, London UK.
