Satchel Projects is thrilled to present Looping the Woods, an exhibition of new paintings by Rosanna Bruno, on view from October 13 through November 12. There will be an opening reception for the artist on Thursday, October 13 from 5-8 PM.

Looping the Woods features seven new paintings and two works on paper which grew out of Bruno’s recent fellowship at Yaddo artist residency in Saratoga Springs, New York. Informed by the artist’s daily morning trips around the surrounding lakes, the works in the exhibition are a response to the immersive experience of this environment, evoking its shifts in light and space.

“What I saw each day was a complex space created by the architecture of trees surrounding these lakes. The large, fallen branches balanced precariously against towering pines and entire trees that had fallen into the lakes—exposing a gnarly network of roots and knots. The circuitry of these fallen limbs against the persistent verticality of the standing pines found its way into my paintings. The layered linear elements in the work are distilled versions of what I experienced in the woods.”

Remarkably open in character, the paintings in Looping the Woods can be seen as much in relation to De Kooning’s late work as to Nicholas Krushenik’s pop abstraction. This openness grows naturally out of the process of their making.

Bruno typically starts working with several canvases at once, allowing for an organic progression between works, and a slower accumulation of marks over time. Color is always the starting point, setting up a loose framework. Structure is established and then interrupted, like a print that has moved off-register with each pass.

“I’m interested in creating structures that are at once solid and firmly planted while also creating a sense that they can collapse at any moment. In these works, I explore spatial relationships that are in constant flux—inviting the viewer to enter, while also pushing them to the edges. These relationships present themselves in the slow buildup of marks, mediated gestures and areas of intense color. I am most interested in the paintings that ultimately belie the experience of their making—offering instead a sense of falling into place or appearing without effort. Play and struggle coexist in painting, and it is in this relationship that I find meaning.”

Rosanna Bruno is a New York-based artist who makes paintings, ceramics, and comics. She received a New York Foundation for the Arts fellowship in painting and has received fellowships from Yaddo, the Rauschenberg Foundation, and LMCC. Her work has been published in The Paris Review, BOMB, TLS, and The Daily Beast, among others.

Her first book, The Slanted Life Of Emily Dickinson (Andrews McMeel) was published in 2017. Her newest book, a collaboration with poet and classicist Anne Carson, is a comic-book version of Euripides’s classic The Trojan Women, published in 2021 (New Directions).

PRESS RELEASE

LIST OF WORKS