Margaux Ogden, Bathers (Green, Olive, Turquoise, Magenta & Orange), 2024; Original Painting

**These original works are available via private sale only. Please email hello@artforchange.com with your interest. 

Margaux Ogden creates abstract compositions that explore themes of repetition, pattern, interdependency, and color relationships. The artist works within series each defined by a recurring structure, wherein subtle shifts intuitively emerge and distinguish one painting from the next. Materiality is another driving factor of her images, in that paint is deliberately thinned out to allow the weave of the primed canvas to remain visible and to make each brushstroke evident. Bright, psychedelic hues are chosen and used straight out of the tube, as a self-imposed limitation as well as a rebellion against the association between color and the unserious or the feminine. Based in Brooklyn, the artist has received grants and residencies from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, Yaddo, and Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, among others. Additionally, she has presented recent solo exhibitions at Tif Sigfrids, Athens, GA; Deanna Evans Projects, New York, NY; and Berggruen Gallery, San Francisco, CA.

Margaux Ogden
Bathers (Green, Olive, Turquoise, Magenta & Orange), 2024
Acrylic on canvas
10 x 8 inches

Bathers (2022-ongoing) is a series of works inspired by Italy’s ancient Baths of Caracalla, where Ogden spent three months as an Abbey Fellow at the British School at Rome. In the artist’s own words, “As is often the case within my practice, I am searching for a gesture or glimpse into either art history or contemporary life—for instance, a line cribbed from a Japanese woodblock print, or a piece of text from a personal letter. I then use these fragments to build out a tightly controlled system of abstraction.” Each defined by a distinct combination of vibrant shades, these works are borne out of a shape that the artist once found within a floor mosaic. Although the originating motif has been abstracted to the point of near obscurity, it nonetheless lays a visual groundwork that forms the spatial and formal logic for every painting in this series—both those created, and those to come.

With environmental conservation a central tenet of ART FOR CHANGE’s mission, the artists invited for this exhibition confront and contribute to the move toward sustainability by exploring nature and the environment through content, methods, inspiration, or process. In conjunction with the exhibition, ART FOR CHANGE and Phillips will plant 1,000 trees to help counter the CO2 emissions produced by the art industry.