{"id":256,"date":"2008-05-26T23:44:08","date_gmt":"2008-05-26T22:44:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.zeitgeistworld.com\/?p=256"},"modified":"2008-05-26T23:56:05","modified_gmt":"2008-05-26T22:56:05","slug":"matthew-brannonthe-question-is-a-compliment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.zeitgeistworld.com\/?p=256","title":{"rendered":"Matthew Brannon…The Question is a Compliment"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Matthew Brannon<\/strong> is known for his use of fine art and commercial printmaking alongside a classic sense of graphic design as a means of camouflaging his unpleasant and\/or absurd content. This strategy is less a gimmick than an acceptance of the psychoanalytic model which believes that content is filtered before it is exposed. The balance of text and image in the letterpress prints provides the clearest example of this approach. One finds in them a word play dealing with career anxiety, alcoholism, insecurity, guilt, humiliation, sexual misadventure and so on, paired with bedside still-life images of lamps and statuettes. The consistent theme of success and failure here advances to a more literary like form both supporting and opposing the idea of the autobiographical. What Brannon began as mimicking the model of a film poster now operates on it\u2019s own visual terms with each print acting simultaneously as chapter and setting.<\/p>\n

Matthew Brannon continues his consideration of the cosmopolitan condition with
\nhis exhibition “The question is a compliment.” A series of new sculptures and
\nletterpress prints use New York City’s immediate surroundings as a backdrop to
\ndiscuss more private pathologies.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Hippocrates, the ancient Greek physician widely recognized as the father of modern
\nmedicine, once advised his students to avoid treating patients in the latter stages of
\nconsumption as their efforts would most assuredly be futile and reflect poorly on
\ntheir abilities. We know now that tuberculosis was a bacterial scourge highly
\nresistant to treatment, but it is interesting to note that the man considered
\nresponsible for medical ethics actually counseled his students that a dead body
\nwould be bad for business. In other words, public perception is everything.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Consumption plays a key role<\/strong> in the work of Matthew Brannon. Not of the
\nparticular tubercular variety, of course, but of the public, Keynesian kind: the kind
\nthat nudges us to want things… to retard our insecurities with trophies, career
\nopportunities, sex and substances. Brannon’s prints, referring to various
\nconsumerist topics such as shoe shopping and fine dining, mischievously turn on
\nthe double meaning of taste, both the discerning eye of aesthetics and the literal
\nsensory taste buds of the tongue.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

More ambivalent than cynical, Brannon’s approach implicates everyone, including
\nhimself, and, most of all, the various and varied commercial media which dictate
\nour desires. From high heels to spare change, Brannon’s letterpress prints and silk-
\nscreens craftily play both sides: he employs mass production techniques to make
\nunique works, uses images and methods that at once seem current yet strangely
\nanachronistic (also mixing the quotidian with the luxury), and provides us with texts
\nthat complicate rather than illustrate. Each piece adding or divorcing itself from a
\nlarger humorous and often noir take on subjects as varied as they are irresolvable.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The gallery is divided into sections<\/strong> using handcrafted display rigs to hang his
\nsignature prints. Infused with a Freudian impulse, the prints encourage an
\nirresolvable but productive tension between text and image. Images of high heels,
\nsushi, sake, typewriters and adult dvds meet with texts on crime, art, sex, success,
\nregret, guilt and shame. The show culminates with his sculpture Rat, a small shelf
\nplaced intentionally out of reach holds of twenty-five copies of his most recent novel
\nof the same title. Denying our access to what we assume to be the shows skeleton
\nkey, leaving its content for a more private moment.
\nThis will be Matthew Brannon\u2019s second exhibition with Friedrich Petzel Gallery. The exhibition will
\nopen on Thursday, May 22, with a reception from 6-8 p.m. and will be on view through July 11.
\nFriedrich Petzel Gallery is located at 535 West 22nd Street, New York, NY 10011. For more
\ninformation, please contact the gallery at 212-680-9467 or info@petzel.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Matthew Brannon is known for his use of fine art and commercial printmaking alongside a classic sense of graphic design as a means of camouflaging his unpleasant and\/or absurd content. This strategy is less a gimmick than an acceptance of the psychoanalytic model which believes that content is filtered before it is exposed. The balance […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zeitgeistworld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zeitgeistworld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zeitgeistworld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zeitgeistworld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zeitgeistworld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=256"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.zeitgeistworld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zeitgeistworld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=256"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zeitgeistworld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=256"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zeitgeistworld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=256"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}