Allestimento: Studio Carlotta Pesce, 2010Installation view. Studio Carlotta Pesce 2010
October – December 2010
Studio Carlotta Pesce is pleased to present the New York artist Matthew Brannon.
A black-humoured reflection on the human condition in contemporary society strongly marks Brannon’s artistic work, which consists of paintings, drawings, prints, installations and tapestries.
Elements of mass communication and everyday objects are reworked in an original way in his works which include notions of fiction and autobiography.
The exhibition displays a canvas as well as his unique letterpress prints which constitute the subjective core of Brannon’s practice. In his prints, which are scrupulously made as single editions, images inspired by the visual language of advertising and posters coexist with texts from overheard conversations and a humourous play on words.Rather than clarifying the meaning of the imagery, the texts complicate and obstruct intuitive interpretation and guide us towards a more psychological reading, concerning themes connected to the self-destructive power of individuals, such as alcoholism, substance abuse, career anxiety, sexual misadventure, ambition and inconsistency.
The canvas Nothing Like It, 2009 presents the back of a painting towards the viewer, overturning the conventions with which painting is traditionally expressed and perceived. Brannon, with an ironic and mocking tone, refers to the cliché of the image of the artist and the vulnerability derived from showing the public his works, and moves attention towards our expectations when we relate to a work of art.
Matthew Brannon was born in St. Maries, Idaho, in 1971. He lives and works in New York.
On 18 November 2010 a personal exhibition opened at Galleria Giò Marconi in Milan.
In 2011 Matthew Brannon will hold a personal exhibition, curated by Daniel Birnbaum, at Portikus in Frankfurt, Germany.
Matthew Brannon has held personal exhibitions in: Mouse Trap, Light Switch, Museum M, Leuven, Belgium; Reservations, Ursula Blickle Stiftung, Kraitchal, Germany; Where Were We, Whitney Museum of American Art at Altria, New York; e Try and Be Grateful, Art Gallery of York University, Toronto.
His works have been presented all over the world in numerous exhibitions, among the others: At Home/Not at Home: Works from the Collection of Martin and Rebecca Eisenberg, Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY; Cabinet of Curiosities con Pablo Bronstein, Matthew Brannon, Anthea Hamilton, and Wayne Koestenbaum, Nottingham Contemporary, Nottingham, England; Beg, Borrow, Steal, Rubell Family Collection, Miami; 50 Moons of Saturn, T2 Trienniale di Torino, Torino, Italy; the 2008 Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; and Multiplex: Directions in Art, 1970 to Now, Museum of Modern Art, New York.