Devening Projects is pleased to present the first solo show at the gallery with Michelle Brandemuehl. Ready for Use features paintings from the past three years. The exhibition opens on Sunday, January 5 from 3 to 5PM and will continue until February 8, 2025

In Michelle Brandemuehl’s recent paintings, humble formal devices are elevated to symbols of reverence and regality. The visual strength of the paintings stems from Brandemuehl’s ability to steady a composition through subversive deconstruction. Organized around familiar structural systems that are deftly fractured, these compositions come to life by infusing energy into what initially feels askew. Broken lines, mismatched patterns, and misaligned grids—each element contributes to the dynamic tension of the work. It is through this unsettled, almost nervous quality that the paintings reveal their vitality.

Brandemuehl is a materialist. If the term accurately describes an artist deeply attuned to the formal necessity of the making process, she is the epitome of such an artist. Her practice involves deep dives into experimentation, with careful attention to the individuality of each step and gestural move. Brandemuehl often relies on restraint and minimal form as points of entry, exploring the relationship between subtlety and the sublime. She is fascinated by the interplay of opposites and how two opposing forces can occupy the same space, as explored through her choice of materials: the grit of paint on linen, black on white, the defined lines of the rectangle, and the soft glow of spray paint. These contradictions shape the work, as the materials and structure she selects form an emotional architecture that invites the viewer into a dialogue, encouraging exploration of these paradoxes.

In Ready for Use — inspired by Richard Tuttle’s quote “Pictures… you don’t want them to be finished, you want them ready for use” — Brandemuehl’s new work carries a sense of being “al dente,” with something held back, unrevealed, close to but not quite done. Through restraint and minimal mark-making, she searches for something unseen, relying on repetition and chance. The work invites the viewer to trust their intuition and interpretation of abstraction and the unknown.

Michelle Brandemuehl (b. 1972) is a painter who splits her time between rural Illinois and Brooklyn, NY. From 1990 to 1995, she studied painting at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her work has been exhibited in the United States and internationally at venues such as Ulterior Gallery (New York), Milk Gallery (New York), and ATA Gallery (San Francisco), among others. She has been awarded residencies at Can Serrat, Barcelona, Spain; PADA Studios, Lisbon, Portugal; the Edward F. Albee Foundation, Montauk, NY; and CCA Residency, Brooklyn, NY.

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