Solo Exhibition: Joshua Brennan: Sample the Remix
Solo Exhibition Sample the Remix
The Robert F. DeCaprio Art Gallery
Moraine Valley Community College, Palos Hills, IL
February 6th - March 7th, 2017
Reception: Monday, Feb. 6, 2:30-4 p.m. / Artist Talk at 3 p.m.
Exhibition Slideshow
Show Announcment
Paintings from the Remixes and Samples series were made using post-consumer waste as both a mark-making material and a surface to develop imagery on. Canvas-like fragments were cut from large large-scale inkjet vinyl billboards and "mis-tint paints," which are pre-mixed colors rejected by picky homeowners, were used to execute the painterly additions. These paintings are not framed or stretched on traditional wooden supports. Instead, they are mounted directly to the gallery walls with gold plated staples that puncture the top margins of the pictorial space. Left to hang under their own weight, they eventually sag. This presentation enhances the heavy-walled vinyl characteristics; imperfect borders, tears, and folds become more pronounced. The presence of gold-plated staples brings a highbrow quality to the fairly lowbrow materials.
The printed imagery (in this case, a "work from home" ad) is embraced, like a stage to perform on and react against. Viewed at a distance, different marks – printed pixels and painterly – vibrato synch up. Upon closer examination, the two surfaces retain their distinct qualities. There is a Hoffmanesque "push and pull" – except it is between digital and analog layers of information. Partly a dream of modernism, but also a partially defaced or vandalized appropriation – these hybrid objects no longer communicate a coherent message. They are now spaces to ponder the past, present, and future.