Elise Brand
Tool, Symbol, Weapon... Mouth
Shug Gallery
12.07.2025 – 01.08.2015
Elise Brand’s debut solo exhibition, ‘Tool,Symbol, Weapon...Mouth’, is a collection of intimate paintings that explore memory, gesture, and self-portraiture in fragments.
Drawn from Elise’s personal archive of photographs, the works are tightly
cropped and emotionally precise. Hands recur as quiet protagonists - tools of expression and truth telling, painted not to illustrate a moment, but to process one. These aren’t posed portraits, but glimpses into memories that resurface with time and distance.
There’s a subtle tension running through the show: between what’s shown and what’s cut away, what’s remembered and what’s still being understood. A painting of her own ear becomes a self portrait in listening; a cropped hand becomes a portrait of presence. The emotional charge lies in what’s unsaid.
Presented at a close, human scale, the exhibition invites viewers to lean in and reflect. The works don’t demand interpretation - they offer space.
As Elise puts it, “The crop creates room for people to return to their own memories.”
Drawn from Elise’s personal archive of photographs, the works are tightly
cropped and emotionally precise. Hands recur as quiet protagonists - tools of expression and truth telling, painted not to illustrate a moment, but to process one. These aren’t posed portraits, but glimpses into memories that resurface with time and distance.
There’s a subtle tension running through the show: between what’s shown and what’s cut away, what’s remembered and what’s still being understood. A painting of her own ear becomes a self portrait in listening; a cropped hand becomes a portrait of presence. The emotional charge lies in what’s unsaid.
Presented at a close, human scale, the exhibition invites viewers to lean in and reflect. The works don’t demand interpretation - they offer space.
As Elise puts it, “The crop creates room for people to return to their own memories.”