{"id":11320,"date":"2015-07-07T21:36:38","date_gmt":"2015-07-07T21:36:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thenewobjectivity.com\/KAPLANTEST\/?post_type=exhibitions&p=11320"},"modified":"2020-02-29T23:41:46","modified_gmt":"2020-02-29T23:41:46","slug":"matthew-brannon-skirting-the-issue","status":"publish","type":"exhibitions","link":"https:\/\/thenewobjectivity.com\/KAPLANTEST\/?exhibitions=matthew-brannon-skirting-the-issue","title":{"rendered":"Skirting the Issue"},"content":{"rendered":"

Casey Kaplan is pleased to present Matthew Brannon\u2019s Skirting the Issue<\/em>, the artist\u2019s second solo exhibition at the gallery. Following a recent three-year \u201ctextploration,\u201d which included the composition of novels and text-based films and paintings, Brannon introduces an anomalous, primarily image-centered installation. Featuring twelve large-scale works on paper, this exhibition focuses on the pictorial and graphic systems that have been ever-present within the artist\u2019s practice. In pursuit of a visual language tendered in a similarly suggestive manner to that of the written word through themes informed by paradigms of 21st century cultural and social establishments, Brannon undertakes traditional methods of printmaking, including letterpress prints, silkscreens, and lush hand painting on paper.<\/p>\n

The underlying story of the exhibition ventures into American history as Brannon explores emotional registers within the context of the Vietnam\/American War, and that of America\u2019s suggested transition from anti-colonial to anti-communist. In an attempt to better understand the period\u2019s ambitions and anxieties, Brannon storyboards and stages, not as a historian, academic or politician, but obliquely (in the sense of Derrida) as an artist. Palpable references to universal yet explicit notions are made; a suspended moment in time holds subliminal connotations that provoke larger queries into social ideals and our personal crises within these constraints.<\/p>\n

The imagery and objects rendered allude to the mass consumerism that rapidly developed during the lead-in to this moment (the \u201840s and \u201850s) in a resounding response to pop cultural idioms provided by television, film, advertisements, and literature. In much of the work there is a playful duality: a diploma rests opposite imagery of stereo equipment; perfume is paired with a Western Union telegram; and comfort food is viewed in tandem with the U.S. capitol, exposing a grand delusion. One of Brannon\u2019s desires is to destabilize perception and allow for multiple interpretations within non-linear compositions of diverging pictorial and temporal elements. Skirting the Issue<\/em> carries this through, releasing the experience by creating a forum where nothing is more suspicious than innocence.<\/p>\n

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[ A R T I S T\u00a0\u00a0 S T A T E M E N T ]<\/p>\n

Not too long ago I stood in a gallery looking at the work of one of my peers and had the thought \u2013 this is contemporary art.\u00a0By that I mean that both the subject and the form of their work was\u00a0very\u00a0contemporary and very\u00a0much about art. As a response, I had the liberating recognition that my own art, long known to have the\u00a0form\u00a0of the last century, also took as its\u00a0subject\u00a0the last century. Limitations are often productive.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been quoted as having once said my art addresses how we are own worst enemies. I no longer ask that question. I know the answer.* I\u2019d like now to concentrate on the broader, more complex question of how America is its own worst enemy.<\/p>\n

I was born in 1971, 6 years into the Vietnam War, just after the \u201968 Tet Offensive and before \u201873 Paris Accords. Richard Nixon was President. I had entered a world battered from events that left the country\u2019s identity in jeopardy and Luce\u2019s concept of the \u201cAmerican Century\u201d shattered. \u00a0The context from which my generation was to respond was a response to those traumatic times. I didn\u2019t realize it at the time but the ’80s\u00a0seemed very much an act of forgetting. In psychoanalytic terms, a trauma not dealt with always finds a way to return.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve long flirted with this Cold War context. But I\u2019d like now to pursue a more concentrated research into the decision-making and events seen from the perspective of a new century. To be clear my research is a personal one. I do this not as a historian, or academic or politician but as an artist might begin to address a history.<\/p>\n

When I was young, for a few years there was nothing more important than Star Wars<\/em>. I saw it in the theatre with my family in 1977 in Alaska after multiple attempts standing in lines to see sold out shows. I can\u2019t explain the excitement that film had for everyone in my 6 year-old age group. Interesting that it comes out essentially a year after the Saigon airlift evacuation. A traumatic, sad, complicated, messy, unsatisfactory end of a war that no one \u201cwon.\u201d But in Star Wars<\/em> everything was reversed: we are the good guys. We fight the guerilla warfare, we are united with diverse nations. This isn\u2019t post-colonial fall out. The evil Empire has the nuclear bomb and they use it. We win in the end using ancient\/spiritual tactics and then receive awards in a massive star-studded ceremony.\u00a0 Everyone I knew loved this film and we bought the toys spawned from it like crack. And now, again, with the U.S. deeply entangled in a highly debatable situation on foreign lands that can\u2019t be summed up or resolved simply – on the horizon the country braces for yet again, forty years later\u2026 Star Wars<\/em>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

–\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Matthew Brannon<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

No, because what is commonly assumed to be past history is actually as much a part of the living present as William Faulkner insisted. Furtive, implacable and tricky, it inspirits both the observer and the scene observed, artifacts, manners and atmosphere and it speaks even when no one wills to listen. And so, as I listen, things once obscure began falling into place. Odd things, unexpected things\u2026 Perhaps it was also to remind me that war could, with art, be transformed into something deeper and more meaningful than its surface violence\u2026\u00a0Ralph Ellison, 1981<\/p>\n

*\u00a0Short term solutions are easier and provide immediate stress relief, unfortunately they have long-term consequences.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Matthew Brannon (b. 1971, St. Maries, ID) lives and works in New York, NY. In recent years, Brannon has presented solo exhibitions at the Marino Marini Museum, Florence, IT (2013); David Kordansky, Los Angeles (2013); Glen Horowitz, East Hampton, NY (2013) and Portikus, Frankfurt am Main, Germany (2011). The artist has participated in group exhibitions such as Office Baroque, Brussels (2015); Cortesi Contemporary, Lugano, Switzerland (2013); the Aspen Art Museum, Aspen (2013); and The Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2008). Recently featured in\u00a0“The Manifest Destiny Billboard Project,” LAND (Los Angeles Nomadic Division) throughout Los Angeles, Brannon is also included\u00a0in a three-person exhibition this September at Mary Mary, Glasgow. Brannon’s work is included in permanent collections such as the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; and the Museum of Modern Art, New York. His most recent novel, “An Irresponsible Biography of the Actor Laurence Harvey,” a biography of the late actor, was published by Onestar Press, Paris in 2014.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":11514,"template":"","categories":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenewobjectivity.com\/KAPLANTEST\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/exhibitions\/11320"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenewobjectivity.com\/KAPLANTEST\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/exhibitions"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenewobjectivity.com\/KAPLANTEST\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/exhibitions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenewobjectivity.com\/KAPLANTEST\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11514"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenewobjectivity.com\/KAPLANTEST\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11320"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenewobjectivity.com\/KAPLANTEST\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11320"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}