“Perceptual Arrangements and Beat Loops,” an exhibition by emerging abstract expressionist painter Matthew Braunginn, officially opened up for display on Tuesday and will run through Saturday, Dec. 21 at the Arts + Literature Laboratory.
Braunginn’s work expresses complex emotions and experiences, providing a unique emotional draw and experience carrying on the individual. “They are my processing of our shared existence,” he tells Madison365.
The pieces in “Perceptual Arrangements and Beat Loops” are jazz and hip-hop-like creations, both within and outside of a set form and function, according to the Arts + Literature Lab website, and they “communicate the creator’s perception of sound, emotion, and experiences while creating new meaning for those observing and experiencing them in their own arrangement.”
Entirely self-taught, Braunginn, who is an activist, writer, political and organizing consultant, and the co-founder of the Young, Gifted and Black Coalition, stumbled upon painting while looking for a new creative outlet in 2017, and it quickly became a huge part of his life.
“At the time, I was perpetually fatigued and exhausted and I emotionally needed a creative outlet and decided randomly to start painting, only later to find out that the perpetual exhaustion and fatigue were due to an autoimmune disorder,” Braunginn remembers. “I started really finding a very emotionally driven process through my art, and it’s become something I have to do. It’s how I process the world and everything I live in.”
For Braunginn, who does a lot of his work out of the Carnelian Art Gallery in downtown Madison where he rents studio space, it’s also a very musically influenced process, as well. He’s always listening to a wide variety of music while he paints.
“That’s where the perceptual arrangements and deep loops came from. A lot of my work is funneled through music that I will be playing like jazz or hip hop or R&B and soul,” he says. “These pieces [for the art exhibit], a lot of them were created within a similar timeframe, some under more jazz arrangements, and others a bit more hip hop, or R&B, particularly ’80s R&B and hip hop influences.”
A few of his paintings are influenced by the late hip-hop producer J Dilla. “There’s definitely some inspirations there of his loops and sounds and repurposing of soul and jazz and R&B beats into the music and there’s a lot of soul and emotion, and uplifting energy within his arrangements,” Braunginn says.
Brauginn’s artwork – 8 pieces – are in the entryway gallery area of the Arts + Literature Laboratory and are part of a larger presentation of multiple different artist showings at Arts + Literature Laboratory that will be on display over this next month.
“In the end, it’s me communicating my own perceptions of existence through color and shapes driven through music,” Braunginn says. “I don’t like telling people what a piece means to me. Once the art gets out into the public, it becomes somebody else’s emotional experience. And so I really like to invite people to experience that art in their own unique way.
“Music is similar in that vein. We all have our own different emotional attachments to music and it hits us differently – how different rhythms and lyrics and beats will impact us differently,” he continues. “I hope that my different arrangements and perceptions of colors and shapes and depth and movement maintain that same kind of musical element of evoking different feelings and emotions and reflections in folks.”
An opening reception for current exhibitions by Braunginn along with artists Jessica Gutiérrez, Issis Macias, Nastia Craig, and Karen Laudon, will be held on Friday, Nov. 22, 5:30-8 p.m. Macias and Gutiérrez will deliver English-language artist talks starting approximately 6:30 p.m. in the first-floor performance gallery.
“I do want to uplift some of the other artists that are going to be opening up that night, too. I’m just really excited to take part in this with these other great local emerging artists that do some great work themselves,” Braunginn says.
The Arts + Literature Laboratory is located at 111 S. Livingston Street #100, on Madison’s East Side. “People are absolutely encouraged to ask questions of myself and the other artists at the event,” Braunginn says. Braunginn adds that he is excited to be featured in the exhibit and admits that he sometimes tries to remember what life was like before he discovered and became immersed in painting.
“It’s really been the last year or two where the switch got flipped and I went from seeing myself as somebody that does art to seeing myself as an artist. It’s very hard to imagine now myself as someone that doesn’t really indulge his creative side. It feels like multiple lifetimes ago of when I didn’t … and it’s really a space where I have found my freedom.”
