TEXTS FOR SHOWS in 2010 PUBLISHED BY GOODEN GALLERY AND THE SOLO PROJECT BASEL
Take me anywhere, I don't care. I don't care.
Solo show at Gooden Gallery London
SEP 2nd – OCT 17th 2010
Sean Branagan's work has a hint of the impossible, but nearly graspable about it. He doesn't describe the world we know - i.e. he doesn't focus on the scaffolding, in which we communally invest, through language and social order to run our lives - an approach that delivers the comforting satisfaction of affirmation and recognition. Instead he attempts to breach 'The Real' [1] - something that differentiates itself from what could be called 'artificial' to be more total, but which is certainly discernible from the imaginary and fanciful.
As a vehicle for 'time', 'light' and 'movement' (elements as valid to his practice as more conventional ones in painting like line, form and colour) the role of the projector has been variously considered in past work. For example, it was built inside the work in the LIGHT FORMS series, it was suspended closely overhead on clamps in works like 'Peep Show' and 'Where the Sun is Silent' (pieces recently seen in the group show PHYSICOLOGY at this gallery).
In those pieces light was always applied to the surface (via the projector) This exhibition sees the adoption of LCD screens, allowing light and movement to emanate from within the work. However, light is also applied externally onto the work; these paintings are lit from the front, and are to be seen in the full light of the gallery space, as in any other painting show.
'the ribbon'
Branagan describes the urge in his studio to hold one end of a ribbon and throw the other end outwards, through and into the work. This feels less about creating a navigable bridge between the tangible and intangible (because this assumes a difference, or a journey, that takes you from one thing, to another, different thing - the conceptual world of the painting and his own reality) it is more about an orchestration of seeing and feeling the work homogenously, about embracing the idea that perhaps there is no difference, perhaps there is only one thing 'The Real'.
In 'Construct in the mind of a sceptic', lines of drawing are conventionally applied onto the Perspex, as a painter might apply them to his canvas, but then they are also (unconventionally) applied at the filming stage as part of the figures environment. As the figure moves, some of the lines are attached to her body and move to her will. We are presented with drawing that was made before filming took place; drawing made during the filming, by the figure as she moved/moves; drawing on the surface of the Perspex and finally drawing on the walls- created by the shadows that result from the surface, in places, being transparent.
Caravaggio and beyond the fingers
In Caravaggio's 'Supper at Emmaus' 1601, the picture plane is established by a figure on the right, whose left arm and fingers reach out towards the viewer. Those fingers may as well mark the edge of the world. They actually mark the edge of the space in the painting, but they indicate a potential to break through, pop the bubble; touch us. In 'Odd things persist for inexplicable reasons' the bars around the head and face extend out towards us; actually pop the bubble. Resin on the surface of the work titled 'Fleshless Lovers' magnifies the pixels in the film, drawing them out, and away from the image inside the painting.
"It is the task of radical thought, since the world is given to us in unintelligibility, to make it more unintelligible, more enigmatic, more fabulous." Jean Baudrillard.
[1] According to Jacques Lacan, one must always distinguish between reality (the fantasy world we convince ourselves is the world around us) and the real (a materiality of existence beyond language and thus beyond expressibility). So much are we reliant on our linguistic and social version of "reality" that the eruption of pure materiality (of the real) into our lives is radically disruptive. And yet, the real is the rock against which all of our artificial linguistic and social structures necessarily fail.” See Jacques Lacan: The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho-Analysis. Trans. Alan Sheridan. Ed. Jacques-Alain Miller. New York: Norton, 1977.
I would like to give very special thanks to PAUL McGRATH for his invaluable technical expertise in the making of this work and GOODEN GALLERY for their support
PHYSICOLOGY
Group show with Cecile Wesolowski and Yael Schmidt
JUNE 4th - JULY 17th 2010
Physicology celebrates moving image as a non- filmic event. One that isn’t rooted in the narrative or governed by conventional vehicles of meaning that are ‘told’. Yael Schmidt, Sean Branagan and Cecile Wesolowski have created work that provides an encounter more tangible. None of this work uses a monitor (in this case a creative dead-end) and none of this work is projected onto the customary screen - allowing post-production decisions to include more than just editing the film. The works are finished in the real world; they occupy actual space and have a physicality that engages our wider perceptions.
Sean Branagan’s work forces a collision and synthesis of different elements from painting, sculpture, architecture and moving image. Projectors positioned on brackets, hovering just above and in front of the small ‘units’ that hold the image are visible and integral to the work - a decision that over-rides filmic convention and reinforces the use of light (from the projector) as a formal element within the ‘painting’; rendering it a material in its own right, a substance equal to paint. Light connects with the painted surface in different ways in these three pieces: in ‘Peepshow' the dabs of paint on the transparent surface function like mini, floating screens that partially catch the image or allow it to fall behind the ‘picture plane’. In ‘Where the Sun is Silent’, the impasto paint provides a location on the canvas within which each little sub-image ‘performs'.
Branagan’s piece, ‘Smoking’, shows a light-ridden naked woman locked into her pose, staring out of a black, void-like environment. She holds a gun in her left hand and a cigarette in her right hand, but the gun isn’t aimed at anyone, and she never smokes the cigarette; it continually burns down and reforms. It is one in a series of pieces where figures inhabit a slice of space and time that we can’t quite figure out. The glitch in comprehension is intriguing; as if the work needs to ‘fail’ (by one set of rules) just enough for us to experience the ‘double take’ that transports us to view using a different set of rules.
To read the full text please go to the GOODEN GALLERY link below.
FOR A TEXT IN THE SOLO PROJECT CATALOGUE 2010
please go to the solo project link below.
|
