SELECT REVIEWS & INTERVIEWS
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"Arden Bendler Browning is inspired by landscape. When working on paper, she layers acrylic ink and spray paint on paper collaged on board. The imagery ranges from the abstract to the non-objective, with elements of nature varying from the visible to the concealed, resulting in mysterious environments." (Susan Isaacs, "Powerful Show of Art by women and non-binary artists working in the region today", 2022)
"...No longer spectators, we are immersed in the city, like Degas' flaneur...But this is not a 'real' space. The abrupt changes of scale and direction, the deep yet inaccessible space, and the fully chromatic unnatural colors suggest a virtual reality rather than a real cityscape." (Mary Murphy, in "Intimacy and Dynamism in PAFA's Urbanism, 2011")
ARDEN BENDLER BROWNING CONQUERS VIRTUAL REALITY
POWERFUL SHOW OF ART BY WOMEN AND NON-BINARY ARTISTS WORKING IN THE REGION TODAY
INTIMACY AND DYNAMISM IN PAFA'S 'URBANISM'
CHAOS AND HARMONY IN ARDEN BENDLER BROWNING'S CITYSCAPES AT BRIDGETTE MAYER GALLERY
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Arden Bendler Browning presents her three-step process of creating work as three separate displays. Inspired by both her travels and studio, she creates her first pieces as colorful collages of watercolor, ink, spray paint, and paper on board. Browning then transforms these mountainous and at times unidentifiable shapes into virtual reality spaces. Next to her collages in the gallery, visitors can put on a VR headset and walk through the invented realms. Soft yet vivid strokes of paint build a valley of safety as I step beneath and on top of the artist’s work. Removing the headset, I see Browning’s final step: a wide, oval-shaped canvas titled VR painting. With a combination of acrylic, gouache, and flashe paint, Browning reveals the growth of her process; layers of lively brushstrokes, varying in thickness and opacity, create a dense, exciting final destination. (Katie Hartley, "Sitting in Uncertainty : Fields and Formations at the Katzen Arts Center, 2022)
SITTING IN UNCERTAINTY : FIELDS AND FORMATIONS AT THE KATZEN ARTS CENTER
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"Bendler Browning spent most of 2020 in a pandemic lockdown in the dense urban squeeze of Philadelphia. She weathered the storm in the modest natural spaces she could access within Philly’s concrete jungles, and in the virtual worlds she created in isolation during the longest days of the pandemic. Her big circular paintings offer viewers immersive portals of chromatic energy to simply get washed away in. The show’s VR component offers an even more extreme escape route, bringing the various paintings to life in nine different scenes, and inviting viewers to splash right through them in a hyperreal gallery in the metaverse." (Joe Nolan, Arden Bendler Browning's Escape Routes at Tinney Contemporary, 2021)
CRAWL SPACE AUGUST 2021
CRAWL SPACE APRIL 2019
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"The dominant characteristic, however, is not motifs but dynamic motion and swirling energy, as if we were looking at the consequences of a passing tornado in stop-motion. Browning is showing us urban environments in transition, although it isn't possible to determine which way they're moving, toward entropy or coherence.
In that sense, Browning is able to suggest both aspects of urban transformation simultaneously." (Edward Sozanski, in 'Urbanism' focuses on renewal and decay in cities, 2011)
URBANISM FOCUSES ON RENEWAL AND DECAY IN CITIES
ARTFUL IMAGES OF ABANDONMENT
SUMMER FUN
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"Arden Bendler Browning also draws on a variety of visual languages and pushes everything into one space. In the huge "Blindspots," she uses opaque watercolor and Flashe, a flat and intensely saturated paint, on Tyvek in a compacted image that seems to include everything and the kitchen sink: It goes too far, but that's what makes the work memorable." (Deanna Sirlin, 'Artists exchange ideas, techniques in 'Seepages', 2010)
ARTISTS EXCHANGE IDEAS, TECHNIQUES IN SEEPAGES