Aude Verbrugge
Born in 1987, in Gien, France
Lives and works in Brooklyn, NY
Verbrugge’s work is about emotional architecture. She creates immersive visual environments that bridge painting and installation. Her practice investigates the psychological and symbolic dimensions of space—architecture not merely as shelter or structure, but as a container of memory, emotion, and rupture. Each body of work is an entry point into a different spatial atmosphere, drawing from built environments such as interiors, ruins, construction zones, and infrastructural systems to explore personal and collective anxieties.
Rooted in a multidisciplinary dialogue with mythology, religion, cinema, and literature, her work conjures dreamlike places that feel simultaneously futuristic and archaic—lost utopias suspended outside of time. Through carefully staged compositions, she evokes spaces that resemble film sets, empty thresholds, or forgotten sanctuaries, where absence becomes a powerful presence. There are no visible figures; instead, chairs, curtains, corridors, or marble walls act as vessels for intimacy, abandonment, sexuality, and solitude. These settings function as mindspaces—echo chambers for emotion, trauma, and the unknown.
Central to her process is the layering of imagery and meaning: photomontage, symbolic references, and fragments of writing co-exist in the paintings, oscillating between detail and erasure, construction and collapse. Visual rhythms shift from hyper-detailed surfaces to rapidly sketched gestures or blurred transitions, mirroring the fragmented way memory operates. Her works hint at narratives that remain incomplete, elliptical, or half-erased.
By invoking architectural archetypes—pillars, doors, veils—her work invites reflection on contemporary conditions: surveillance, climate grief, displacement, technological alienation. Yet it remains rooted in a poetic sensibility that embraces mystery, synchronicity, and the spiritual. Time becomes fluid. Space bends. Each piece opens a portal—a metaphysical glitch—where the invisible might momentarily reveal itself.
Education
2011 Master’s Degree in Fine Arts, Ecole Supérieure des Beaux Arts, Montpellier, France
2009 Bachelor’s Degree in Fine Arts, Ecole Supérieure des Beaux Arts, Montpellier, France
2005 Bachelor’s Degree in Modern Literature, University Paul Valery, Montpellier, France
Exhibitions
2023 Residents exhibition, Saturn’s Return, San Juan Islands, WA
2022. Two person exhibition, “Last Song, Lost Thoughts”, Railroad, Brussels, BE
2020 Group exhibition “Wide Open”, BWAC, Brooklyn, NY
2019 Group exhibition “Show your World”, Gallery MC, New York, NY
2019 Open Studios, Bushwick Open Studios, Brooklyn, NY
2019 Group exhibition “Priority Mail Biennale” at Ground Floor Gallery, Brooklyn, NY
2019 Group exhibition “Now is the Future” at Local Projects, Long Island City, NY
2011 Solo exhibition, ESBAMA, Montpellier, France
2010 Group exhibition “Temps Reels” at FRAC LR, Regional Fund of Contemporary Art, Montpellier, France.
2008 Video projection at the Concert for the Centenary of the birth of Olivier Messiaen, Conservatory of Music, Montpellier, France.
Awards / Residency
2023. Artist in Residency, Saturn’s Return, San Juan Islands, WA
2020. Award for “Architectural”, Artrepreneur, 1st prize.