Matthew Brannon
Exhausted Blood & Imitation Salt
John Connelly Presents, New York
February 20 — March 27, 2004
Exhausted Blood and Imitation Salt, an exhibition of new prints and tapestries, is Matthew Brannon's first solo show in New York. The mediums Matthew Brannon chooses are directly related to his interest in all things promotional, peripheral or removed from their original sources. While the structures of promotional sources of information such as movie posters and menus form the visual foundation of Brannon's prints and silk screens, the artist's hand stitched and stenciled tapestries are part of a dialect of dłcor and craft that is reflected in commercially printed fabrics, window displays, and wallpaper. The prevailing color scheme for Exhausted Blood and Imitation Salt is black, gold and pink. This black humored poetic palette is used to both endorse and pervert the art of persuasion found in the nonsensical text of the prints themselves and can be seen as a constructive response to the jungle of information one must navigate daily.
The exhibition contains two new pieces from an ongoing series of mock haunted house movie posters (2000 -). Matthew Brannon has been using the classic haunted house film structure as a model for the artist's practice. The basic plot line follows a crack team of both skeptics & believers, hired to navigate and record the psychic energies of a supposed haunted house. The pieces are silk screened in small editions at various sizes.
Resulting from a uncomfortable relation to the permanence of words Matthew Brannon has created his own brand of surrealist poetry by placing a series of faux "credits" at the bottom of his prints. A typical credit reads: "Co-Starring: Divorce Magazine, The Guilt Which Organizes Your Fear, Black Am-Ex, etc..." These cut-ups are both appropriated from various sources; conversations, adverts, menus... and invented. This word play is also evident in four letter-pressed 'wine label' prints. Here the out-dated medium of the letterpress is beautifully revived to investigate alcohol's belligerent euphoria.
Matthew Brannon's tapestries began as "props" to the haunted house films. They since have grown into their own independent body. They are the outcome of years spent examining the un-resolvable tension between decoration and discourse he found in painting. Quoting bucolic elements such as swaying tree branches and hovering birds, they can also be read as "nature" once removed and controlled to now be used as décor. Not painting and not primary, the tapestries stem from a decorator's history and are self-conscious in their relation to space.
For Exhausted Blood & Imitation Salt, Matthew Brannon also invited Richard Phillips to produce a drawing for his announcement poster. The resulting image is both responsive to his work in attitude and themes while the act of commission remains a somewhat jarring subversion of artist promotion.
JOHN CONNELLY PRESENTS
526 West 26th Street, New York, NY 10001
www.johnconnellypresents.com
