Isabelle Brourman "Exhibit 1: Paper Trail"
Isabelle Brourman
Exhibit 1: Paper Trail
January 9 — February 23, 2025
17 Pike Street
"Many of us reported the words but only Isabelle captured the multi layered feelings of the Trump courtroom and everyone in it." - Lawrence O'Donnell, MSNBC
"There's a lot of genius in the work" - Donald J. Trump, President of the United States of America and Defendant in the People of New York v. Donald J. Trump
"She sketched the courtroom-the judge, the lawyers, the witnesses, and most crucially, the defendant. But instead of keeping herself and her gaze out of it, as is standard in courtroom sketches, artist Isabelle Brourman poured herself in, capturing not just the players but the emotion of the room... These works remind me of the German expressionism movement, they remind me of Ernst Kirchner and Max Beckmann who so beautifully and also hauntingly captured what it was like in Germany after the first world war and before the second world was when there was all of that trauma and all of that 'lets live now, for the moment'. Isabelle captured the moment of 2024: what it feels like to be an American now. We are going to look back on these images and be taken back to today..."
- Katy Tur, MSNBC
"Sketch artists who express a desire to work from court are vetted and Isabelle Brourman, while unique as an artist, represents no exception from a safety, security or practical perspective."
- Al Baker Director of Communications, NYS Office of Court Administration
"At the beginning of 2024, my editors at New York magazine assigned me to cover the many trials of Donald Trump, and for much of that time, I was partnered with Isabelle Brourman. Her phantasmagorical sketches perfectly illustrated the strange and often absurd spectacle that surrounded the once-and-future president in the courtroom. Trump may hope it will all fall down the memory hole, but Izzy's work won't let us forget." - Andrew Rice, New York Magazine
"I was fortunate to have a unique vantage point as Isabelle created a visual record of the Donald Trump civil fraud trial. For eleven weeks I watched over her shoulder as she drew and what struck me was her ability to get everything that was happening around the courtroom, in addition to the witnesses and parties involved, incorporated into her work. Something would happen or be said and Izzy would quickly take her pen, jot a word, phrase or small sketch in a blank space on the page. Then over the course of time that small notation would grow into an image capturing the emotion or feeling of what happened. It was truly remarkable to witness history being documented as art before my eyes." - Captain Navatto, New York State Courts
"Isabelle Brourman is an incredible artist whose work vividly captures everything in the courtroom - from subtle emotions to major revelations - and puts the viewer right in the center of the action," said New York Attorney General Letitia James. "Ms. Brourman is a complete original, and it has been an honor and a pleasure to get to know her and her art. I look forward to seeing what she does next." - Letitia James, Attorney General
"Your honor I want to ensure the demonstrative exhibits made in The People of New York v. Donald J. Trump are entered into the record as Exhibit 1: Paper Trail. I submit for the record, that I have been challenged regularly about my intentions with the work - sometimes accused of villainizing Donald Trump, other times perceived as glamorizing him, but the truth is that I did everything in my own style, which I would summarize as "Tasmanian-devil glamour." There is the 200-year-old tradition of the court sketch, art for absent eyes, and then my own work, which is art for art's sake. That is the seat I created for myself in the court system, and I owe it to the courtroom artists who labored away before I showed up, much to their surprise (they hadn't seen a new face in decades) and sometimes to their hostility. I sneaked in on their coattails, modeling myself as one of them and then breaking code by exercising (not without paranoia) my freedom to interpret as I saw fit. I fight to play in burning buildings by becoming the professional. I jot down the crowd melody fake doves spiritually ransacked by nostalgia's invulnerable knife which guards old imagery at the window. I crawled into the window from real time born to provoke the junk of American limbo and that which denies natural death. The drawings I bring back from these spectacular proceedings are not cloaked in institutional style, but made naked by my own. This project keeps a record of the feeling. I put respect on vibration's name and wage active battle against pre-conceived narrative which pets the ego and fogs the body. My improvisation is an admission of uncertainty made actionable through curiosity and fashionable risk. The drawings and marked up blouses and napkins and weight loss and passes are artifacts of my expedition. I trust my instincts, pray over paper, and adrenalized go zen. I am detectable the way a magpie is. The defendant is my muse. This project is not about Donald Trump, it's about the American Imagination." - Isabelle Brourman
Installation
"I Want to See It" , The People of New York v Donald Trump, Civil Fraud Trial, 2023
Pencil, ink, watercolor, acrylic on paper
25½ x 25¼ x 1½ in
