Matthew Brandt caught my eye when the VMFA recently acquired one of his large pieces - I instantly fell in love. The piece was called
Grey's Lake, a gigantic c-print that had been soaked in the water of the lake depicted in the photograph.
He utilizes the subject of his prints in his process by burying them, soaking them in bodies of water, or in his series
Honeybees in 2007 he used the carcasses of the masses of bees he discovered dying from colony collapse disorder in his emulsion.
While he's begun to anticipate and maybe even coax some of the outcomes, each print is one of a kind. He's also been in group exhibitions with another artist I've posted before, Mariah Robertson. I'm more and more drawn into the world of chemical reactions and all the wonderful discoveries that can be made by changing a process in different ways.
Go to the VMFA and check out his work in person if you haven't had the pleasure yet.
You should look at Liz Deschenes, Eileen Quinlan, Lisa Oppenheim, James Welling, and Ellen Carey.
ReplyDeleteI really appreciate all the wonderful artists to look up/add to my vocabulary!
DeleteThese are gorgeous, I can see why you might have fallen in love with pieces like this. The process driven idea and the very organic forms and textures can relate very closely to some of your more recent work. In fact I would be interested to see how you might be able to incorporate more color into your own pieces. i know that your last abstract prints were made in the darkroom with different chemicals so i don't know exactly how color can be pushed while working in the schools darkroom. interested to see exactly what work these Brandt images will inspire.
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