who is she? terry braunstein Curated by Claudia Bohn-Spector and Sam Mellon

Terry Braunstein’s photomontages simultaneously provoke and enchant. Deeply rooted in , , and mid-20th century , they examine life’s passages and other human experiences, evoking an imagery that is dreamlike, poetic, and refreshingly authentic.

For almost 40 years the Los Angeles-based artist has engaged a wide array of artistic media — , , printmaking, , and even video — revealing layers of hidden meaning beneath the seemingly mundane and obvious. Braunstein is primarily known for her work. Clipping images from contemporary magazines, vintage books, and other print media, and assembling them into new, often startling, contexts, she presents the viewer with a new visual syntax that explores issues of identity, alienation, and myth.

Braunstein’s connection to the Dada movement is immediately apparent in her . At the explosion of Modernism, Dada artists like Hannah Höch, , and employed techniques of photomontage and assemblage to convey political criticism and notions of the absurd by combining found images and objects to reveal the Works chaos and hypocrisy of life during the Weimar Republic. To challenge contemporary Framed collage, photomontage, mixed media, digital inkjet prints, assemblages, artist books, sculpture, audiences, Braunstein adapts similar strategies, referencing such varied subjects as nuclear mini-installations, and large-scale installations war, terrorism, the Ku Klux Klan, adoloescence, and the Buddha, while exploring personal (casework is required for the artist books) undertones that are strikingly relevant.

Space Through images of technology, mythology, memory, and history, Braunstein presents her 300 – 500 linear feet (92 – 153 linear meters) “reality” as life within her collages. Her exploration of the world through what she calls 2,500 – 4,000 square feet (230 – 370 square meters) “research and scientific observation” culminates in a dynamic redefinition of the real that exists somewhere between photographic documentation and psychological expression. Catalogue Who is She? Terry Braunstein Braunstein’s broad-ranging themes are at once personal and universal, simple and complex, Co-published by the Long Beach Museum of Art and Thistle & Weed Press, 2015 attesting to one woman’s journey through the modern-day world. This mid-career retrospective Essays by Claudia Bohn-Spector and Tosh Berman begins in the late 1980s and ends with the exhibition’s leading question — “Who Is She?” — in a series of works begun in 2013. Booking Curatorial Assistance Traveling Exhibitions In this age of ubiquitous digital manipulation, this survey exhibition gives us a rare opportunity Laura Sumser, Exhibitions Manager to relish the virtuosic precision of the hand-made, highlighting as it does the juxtaposition of [email protected] | +1.626.577.0044 disparate media and illustrating Braunstein’s message clearly and profoundly. Front cover: Who is She? series, presented with 80 other slides using automatic slide projector Inside cover: Who is She? XII (drawing her with Venus), 2012, digital inkjet print, 42 x 30 in. This page: Who is She? X (civilian woman with soldiers), 2012, digital inkjet print, 42 x 30 in. Back cover: Chutes and Ladders 4 (man with boy and black board), 1999, assemblage, 15 x 12 in. Who is She? VII (carrying huge Magritte rock), 2012, digital inkjet print, 42 x 30 inches (framed) Who is She? #6 (woman in triangle), 2013/2014, mixed media sculpture, 7 (h) x 5 1/2 (diameter) inches Who is She? II (woman with dreaming Rousseau), 2012 Digital inkjet print, 42 x 30 inches (framed) Who is She? #14 (woman with house window), 2013/14, mixed media sculpture, 6 1/4 x 4 1/4 x 2 inches Who is She? VIII (woman with spiked coffin), 2012, digital inkjet print, 42 x 30 inches (framed) In a Day’s Work VII, 1988 Photomontage, 20 x 16 inches (framed) In a Day’s Work V, 1988, photomontage, 20 x 16 inches (framed) Fathers and Sons II, 1990, photomontage, 20 x 16 inches (framed) Nuclear Summer III, 1986, photomontage, 20 x 16 inches (framed) Nuclear Summer I, 1986, photomontage, 20 x 16 inches (framed) Life in a Nuclear Age VI, 1986, photomontage, 20 x 16 inches (framed) Life in a Nuclear Age II, 1986, photomontage, 20 x 16 inches (framed) Miami Beach I, 1988, photomontage, 20 x 16 inches (framed) Miami Beach IV, 1988, photomontage, 20 x 16 inches (framed) Adolescent Series X, 1986, photomontage, 20 x 16 inches (framed) Adolescent Series VIII, 1986, photomontage, 20 x 16 inches (framed) Boundless I, 1996, digital print, 20 x 16 inches (framed) Modern Times VIII, 1996, photomontage, 20 x 16 inches (framed) Empty Nest II, 1986, photomontage, 20 x 16 inches (framed) Empty Nest III, 1986, photomontage, 20 x 16 inches (framed) Awry I, 2001, digital photograph, 24 x 18 inches Awry III, 2001, digital photograph, 24 x 18 inches Awry II, 2001, digital photograph, 24 x 18 inches Awry IV, 2001, digital photograph, 24 x 18 inches Mid-life IV, 1998, photomontage, 16 x 20 inches (framed) Playthings III, 2001, digital photograph, 24 x 18 inches A Particular Horizon, 1984 Limited edition artist book, Cibachrome photographs, 18 x 24 inches Station Identification, 1984, limited edition artist book, 21 Cibachrome photographs, 15 x 12 1/2 inches each (framed) Our Town X, 1985, photomontage, 20 x 16 inches What Beetle is This?, 1988/1989 Mixed media, altered artist book and Cibachrome photographs Book: 8 x 51/2 x 1/2 inches; photograph: 16 x 20 inches (framed) Males and Females, 1989 Limited edition artist book, Cibachrome photographs, 16 x 20 inches (framed) Installation and detail Dancing to Kerouac – Early dance set model 2, 2011, mixed media, altered artist book, 12 x 12 x 18 inches (framed) The Book, 1989, one-of-a-kind altered artist book, photomontage and mixed media, 11 x 9 x 2 1/4 inches Education by Play and Games, 2000 One-of-a-kind altered artist book, photomontage and mixed media, 10 1/4 x 8 x 1 1/2 inches Installation and detail Time Bound, 2006, mixed media installation (, wire, found objects, miniatures), 72 x 86 x 50 inches Installation images from exhibition at the Long Beach Museum of Art (November 20, 2015 – February 14, 2016) Installation images from exhibition at the Long Beach Museum of Art (November 20, 2015 – February 14, 2016) This exhibition is organized and traveled by Curatorial Assistance Traveling Exhibitions a non-profit organization dedicated to creating opportunities for access, outreach and education in the visual arts