BREACH, The Newly Founded Gallery By Fabien Castanier & Ed Broner, Presents The Inaugural Exhibition NOW NOW

Now Now is the inaugural exhibition of BREACH, the newly founded contemporary gallery from Fabien Castanier and Ed Broner. With Castanier as the gallery’s owner-director and Broner undertaking curation and art direction, BREACH is built on a philosophy of openness and equal opportunity. In contrast to selection processes based on discriminatory categories, such as social background or educational credentials, at BREACH, it is the quality of the artistic work that is paramount in the program’s determination. Now Now, which opens on Saturday May 22nd with an all-day reception & brunch, will exemplify this ideology with twenty-six international and diverse artists.

As a decades-long gallery owner and director, Fabien Castanier continues to explore ventures in the art world sphere that bridge the gap between cultures and genres. Founding BREACH has opened up more pathways towards the cultivation of emerging and diverse talent, always with the mission to unlock new potential within a strong international gallery program. With his sights aimed at creating a welcoming space for contemporary and cutting-edge artists, Castanier remains an advocate for the perseverance of the cultural landscape in Miami and beyond.

Anne Torpe
“A Guest at Sunrise”
oil on canvas, 2021
60 x 45 in. (150x115cm)

As an artist and curator, Ed Broner has long been intensly involved with the most diverse places in which painting can be created. On the one hand, he has demonstrated a keen intuition for young talent for many years – even when they were still students experimenting at their universities. He has a sense for trends, movements and emerging careers. His former blog Now Now Contemporary brought about influential discoveries. On the other hand, Ed Broner doesn’t just look around at institutions, nor is he interested in who was a master student of which professor when making his selection. He makes no distinction between self-taught artists, outsiders of an underground culture, graffiti sprayers, or award-winning fellows. Age and origin are also irrelevant. Ed Broner curates paintings, not biographies or profiles. An unfortunately rare but all the more exciting approach.

Joachim Lambrechts
“God told me to paint a Bull, so I did. Or at least I tried.”
lacquer, oil paint, and oil stick on canvas
53 x 39 in. (135x110cm)

Now Now shows a wide range of current positions. Sculptures also appear, but they too are from the hands of the painters. The paintings are figurative, abstract, gestural, quiet, dirty, wild or orderly. Here, too, the transformations of the 21st century are reflected: we no longer live in a time when abstract and figurative paintings are on opposing sides, operating with contrary views of the world, as was still the case in postwar and Cold War debates.

Ed Broner
“Can you feel it painting”
oil stick and spray paint on canvas, 2020
79 x 67 in. (200x170cm)

How many times has painting been declared dead? How often has it been declared finished? In the 20th century, it died regularly. Painters and non-painters alike fantasized about its funerals, gleefully wrote obituaries, proclaimed its last words. Yet painting came back into the public eye as often as it was banished from it. If painting was a cat, it would not have seven lives, but thousands. It was never really dead. Today, at the beginning of the 21st century, the question “with or without canvas?” no longer arises. Those who paint just paint. Outside, on walls, on trains, illegally. Or legally on the wall of their children’s rooms or on the canvas in their studios. Painting is everywhere. At the present time, you no longer have to overcome it, conceptually excuse or deconstruct it, no longer have to transfer it to other media or cut it with a knife to talk about it. Painting is everywhere, from cradle to grave. Recently, painting has regained its right to live and is more topical than ever – with all that that implies.

Hermes Berrio
“Thought it would work out, but enh”
mixed media on canvas, 2021
78 x 50 in. (198x127cm)

Today and in Now Now the heterogeneous influences, such as from the realistic, the naive, the expressive, the surreal or the color field painting, are formative. Associations of sampling arise, reminscent of a folklore of hip-hop, comic-crime stories, an Asian pop art of Mexican mural painting or childish (night) dreams of color matter. There is a focus on affirming narratives, vivid storytelling, the creation of protagonists, imperfect (anti-)heroes and new friends. Together, the works of the twenty-six participating international artists create a colorful world of hybrid styles, landscapes of abstraction and their new inhabitants. The BREACH philosophy is already evident here.

Text by BREACH, and Larissa Kikol (Translated from the German by Carolin Dickel)