ABOUT THE COLLECTIVE
ABDA Collective is the Los Angeles-based practice of Alexis Branger and Devin Andersen. Their abstract work focuses on layers of texture, color and industrial material studies to create visually dynamic compositions that transcend two-dimensionality.
Alexandra (Alexis) Branger is a first-generation Los Angeles native with roots in Barranquilla, Colombia and Caracas, Venezuela. Devin Andersen is a Los Angeles transplant from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. They met while pursuing a BFA in Industrial Design (Branger) and a BFA with an emphasis on Studio Arts Painting (Andersen) at Otis College of Art & Design.
After graduating, Branger began working in the motion picture and television industry as a painter and set designer. Subsequently, transitioning her trade-skills to focus on fine arts through solo and collaborative projects.
Out of college, Devin was the co-owner and curator of The Barber Shop Art Space, an artist-run project space in the West Adams area of Los Angeles, from 2013 to 2015. He then pursued his interest in commercial design and fabrication by working as a construction coordinator, fabricator, and installer for fine artists, photographers, and film productions, while continuing his fine art practice.
Branger and Andersen work side by side in the film production industry as well as in their personal art practice. Their fascination with process and material studies is the driving force in their work. ABDA Collective applies commercial fabrication and production techniques to fine art, creating works that amplify the sum of their parts.
In recent years, they have shown with galleries in Los Angeles, New York, Miami and Mexico City.
Our Approach
As ABDA Collective, we create abstract work that applies techniques used in our individual art practices through abstract assemblage, paintings and soft sculpture. Stylistically, our work recognizes contemporary abstraction while borrowing from traditional visual art languages such as pop art, fauvism, and assemblage. The result is colorful post-pop abstractions often paired with illustrative line work, bold textural paper collages, and spatial installations. We are drawn to create visually dynamic compositions that invites the viewer to engage with the work as well as the space in which it is presented. Our work is inspired by physical texture and chaotic maximalism at its intersection with spatial design. Together we communicate through patterns, colors, shapes and textures.
Our work uses traditional and non-traditional art materials, such as paper, latex paint, yarn, wood and plexi cut outs, wall and ceiling texture, hydro-dipping, industrial enamels, spray paint and steel. We involve techniques such as collage, wood working, digital art, printing and machining. Often a digital sketch is made as the process evolves we consider structure, color and composition. We choose to work with these materials because it begins a dialogue between traditional art practices and the exploration of new techniques and mediums. It is within this conversation that our work is situated.
Our practice represents the amalgamation of two individual artistic processes meeting at a crossroads, with each piece of work arriving at its own destination and one never identical to the other. The final result evolves by working with each other's differences and finding a complementary balance. It is in this convergence of differing techniques, ideas and backgrounds that a visual discourse is held, often advocating and challenging each other simultaneously. We are driven by the urge to create a cohesive visual language for viewers to contemplate.