Matthew Brannon at David Kordansky

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The decision to represent the mess of history with the cleanliness of silkscreen graphics - opposing the usual hair representing its miasma - commendable if symbols and things didn’t present their own interpretive vague, a tidiness become question of what’s been scrubbed. “the war from which my generation sprung was rarely spoken of.” cleaned to ominousness.  The “short timer” calendar, explained in the pr,* becoming glyphs for the artist object, interpreting another, the “soldier-‘artist’.” The “soldier-‘artist’”, the object-subject, the theater pieces Brannon has continually moved into, an interpretive scenery invented.

*“someone with less than 100 days left on his tour. During the war, some would draw calendars, often lewd, to count down their time. Brannon’s research led him to compose fictional renditions” 

Group Show at Mary Mary

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The loaded vacancy of de Chirico, which everyone early learns is caused by discrepant perspective amplified by late Italian sun, here duplicated in a way that averts explanation, objects taking on the same eschew weight hovering with a coded urgency of stark quiet.


See too: Mathew Cerletty at Office Baroque, Matthew Brannon at Casey Kaplan , Group Show at Salle Principale

Matthew Brannon at Casey Kaplan

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Midcentury graphic design made as stifling as the era's social mores, Brannon's cleanliness hasn't ever felt nice so much as overbearing hypochondria. Cleanliness becomes the expression of repression, and the clinicalness of printmaking anality becomes suffocating, even the friendly ones seem without air, ketchup like terror, nostalgia cleansed till the skin dries, cracks, and bleeds.