Bio
A mature artist, with an extensive history, I have exhibited and been formally represented by The Phyllis Kind Gallery, Carl Hammer Gallery, Carrie Secrist Gallery, and now Zolla/Lieberman Gallery. In New York I was represented by Claire Oliver Gallery and Littlejohn Contemporary. Reviewed in Frieze, Art in America, ARTFORUM and the Wall Street Journal. Significant awards including: Guggenheim Grant, Tiffany Foundation Award, and in 2009 I was given an “Anonymous Was a Woman Award” In 2014 Phyllis Bramson was selected as one of the Women’s Caucus for Art Lifetime Achievement recipients.
Over 30, one-person exhibitions including: The New Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago Cultural Center, Boulder Art Museum, Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago ( a mid -career survey), Claire Oliver Gallery, NY , Philip Slein Gallery, St. Louis, MO, Zolla/Lieberman Gallery, Chi. IL, Carl Hammer Gallery, Chi. IL and the Museum of West Virginia.
Group exhibitions such as: Seattle Art Museum, Art Institute of Chicago, Contemporary Museum of Art/ Chicago, Smart Museum, Renwick Museum, New Museum of Contemporary Art and the Corcoran Museum's 43rd Biennial. Select exhibitions include: a one person exhibition at the Claire Oliver Gallery, New York, Aspen Art Museum, "Chicago Imagism(s)", Natalie and James Thompson Art Gallery of San Jose State University in California, Chicago's Museum of Contemporary Art's exhibition, “Seeing Is a Kind of Thinking: a Jim Nutt Companion", Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL, “Surrealism: The Conjured Life”, and Shane Campbell Gallery, Chicago, IL, “Chicago and Vicinity”.
Bramson lives and works in Chicago, advising at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Selected for one of two artists for the Annual Distinguished Artist interviews during the College Art Association’s 2010 Conference in Chicago. Bramson is represented by: Zolla Lieberman Gallery, Chicago.
Personal Statement
I use images that are infused with lighthearted arbitrariness and amusing anecdotes about love and affection, in an often cold and hostile world. Mostly, I am making work that percolates forth life's imperfections: that doesn't take decorum all that seriously, refusing to separate manners of taste from larger questions about "good behavior". The paintings are reactions to all sorts of sensuous events, from the casual encounter to highly formalized exchanges of lovemaking (and everything in between). Miniaturized schemes, which meander between love, desire, pleasure and tragedy; all channeled through seasonal changes. Burlesque-like and usually theatrical incidents, that allow for both empathy and "addled" folly, while projecting capricious irritability with comic bumps along the way. The art writer Miranda McClintoc wrote: "Phyllis Bramson's imaginative portrayals of stereotypical sexual relationships incorporate the passionate complexity of eastern mythology, the sexual innuendos of soap operas and sometimes the happy endings of cartoons."
Disclaimer: All work represents the views of the INDIVIDUAL ARTISTS & AUTHORS who created them, and are not those of the school or museum of the Art Institute.
