Ovals of color hover in pairs, one above the other, close but rarely touching. Torn from sheets of tissue paper steeped in hand-mixed ink and adhered to untreated canvases, they interact in formal and narrative relationships that speak to interdependence, hierarchies, and the straightforward connection of maker to materials. In their final body of work, artist Nancy Brooks Brody, who died of ovarian cancer in December of 2023, retains their fidelity to minimalism and a deeply personal studio practice, creating seven vertical works of tissue paper on canvas that make up Nancy Brooks Brody: Ode at Klaus von Nichtssagend Gallery. Brody’s assertive use of color and shape to create a compositional template that repeats across iterations is immediately engaging, but look closer and more intimate traces of the artist’s hand are revealed in the small tears and puckered surfaces of their delicate materials.

In Untitled (2023), a large work measuring five by three feet, a vibrant red oval of tissue floats above an almost identical one in black. Sized to fit as much of the canvas as possible, the forms feel a bit cramped. The edges of the red oval are frayed. Small tears in its surface show where the crimson ink has bled into the canvas to which it is affixed. Slightly larger than the picture frame, a small bit of the black oval wraps around the side, quietly underscoring the three-dimensionality of the object itself and recalling an intimate moment in Brody’s process when they decided to gently tuck the still-wet tissue around the corner of the canvas. In another untitled work from 2023, a slightly more generous channel of space running between the green and black ovals creates a sense of distance that suggests an entity and its shadow, a presence and its effect. The vibrant green oval easily becomes the dominant subject as the black oval recedes in importance—and yet it continues to intrigue me. Is it a shadow or a hole? A second object or a space from which the green ovoid has risen or into which it might fall? Read More