In Due Course

Kill your darlings— the age-old adage grates at me as a writer, but this is the ethos that Braden embodies so boldly as an artist. These days she draws the greatest inspiration from film, particularly the atmospheric work of Payal Kapadia and Menelick Shabazz.

Kapadia’s work at times integrates dream sequences and unreality as part of a narrative’s atmosphere. Braden draws upon this liminal quality of perspective; Dress Rehearsal intrudes upon a woman clad in yellow, presumably the central figure of In Due Course. She is captured from behind, fixing her hair in a mirror, yet to put on her face. Her performance has yet to begin.

Complete Cast pushes further, dropping its viewer directly out of the eye of action. The gaze settles behind eight women in a close-up shot, and here, Shabazz’s influence peeks through, using both hair and set design as mouthpiece for political consciousness. A quick glance assumes these women are uniform aside from their assigned background colors, though a longer look reveals each has a discretely personalized pose and hairstyle.

Braden takes this meticulous filmmaker’s eye to her artwork, organizing each piece as belonging to an established shot list. How exactly does one translate film into static image?

Make it move. Split screens, medium full shots, extreme close ups— each piece is multidimensional. The shots hum with 1960s kind of vibrancy, each canvas a paused frame of a film I am eager to continue until—

—this needs new colors. She pulls the establishing shot of a building’s exterior from the wall and rests it against a thick stack of what I can assume are her other recently slain darlings. B-roll, I suppose. Braden aims for her craft and process to be as economical and visible as possible. What initially began as a reclamation of time, she’s found this unencumbered approach a way to work less afraid and honor her cinematic instincts. In many ways, In Due Course is not just an exhibition but a short film, following the story of a single female performer. Each work is imbued with a newfound yet already signature honest immediacy. A-roll shot through the hazy veil of memory, filled in with thick, confident brushstrokes.

— Katherine Hollis

Braden Hollis (b. 1998, Los Angeles, CA) is a painter and filmmaker living and working in Brooklyn, New York. Her paintings evolve through an intuitive process of layering and removal, much like choreography. Her works often begin with pure color, while also incorporating and destabilizing images from direct observation, or sourced from movies, television and her personal archive of images. She received her BFA from The Cooper Union in 2020. Her work has been the subject of a solo exhibition at 56 Henry in New York and UTA Artist Space in Atlanta. Hollis has been included in exhibitions at Sean Kelly Gallery, Los Angeles; Castle Gallery, Los Angeles; Tilton Gallery, New York; Anthony Gallery, Chicago; New Image Art Gallery, Los Angeles; and Japanese American Cultural Community Center, Los Angeles. Hollis was an artist in residence at the Church in Sag Harbor in 2025 and the Macedonia Institute in 2022. She was also a recipient of the Sylvia Appelman Painting Award in 2019.