30/1/2009
Two-person show
M+B, Los Angeles
Mat Brinkman creates drawings of monsters, creatures, and phantoms which double as portraits of the horrors of contemporary human nature. Melissa Brown works within the serendipitous collisions between the visual language of lotto tickets and utopian architecture of the 1970s.
M+B is pleased to present MELISSA BROWN & MAT BRINKMAN, a two-person show of new works on paper. Friends and contemporaries, Brinkman and Brown both attended the Rhode Island School of Design in the mid-1990s. Both artists create iconic, unsettling images that comment and expand upon their popular visual culture roots.
Mat Brinkman, co-founder of Fort Thunder and the collective Forcefield, creates drawings of monsters, creatures, and phantoms which double as portraits of the horrors of contemporary human nature. Drawing on creators like Gary Gygax and the visual languages of role-playing games and Death Metal, Brinkman has re-invented the once benign idea of "monster" for a new, much more sinister millennium.
Melissa Brown works within the serendipitous collisions between the visual language of lotto tickets and utopian architecture of the 1970s. Brown constructs elaborate geometries from discarded lotto tickets, creating images and new values. She notes, "When the collages are complete, I calculate the total face value of the included tickets. As an artwork, my goal is to double the money that was lost in the purchases of losing tickets. The compositions are graphs of mathematical phenomena and ubiquitous natural geometry."
For this show, both artists confront each other with structures and forms grounded in darkness (financial, psychological and mythical) but formed in the light of their restless re-invention of their inherited cultures.
Mat Brinkman lives and works in Texas. He has exhibited at the Whitney Biennial, 2002 (as part of Forcefield); Galleri Loyal, Stockholm; Max Wigram, London; AMP, Athens; and Stairwell Gallery, Providence.
Melissa Brown lives and works in Brooklyn. She has mounted solo exhibitions at Bellwether Gallery, New York and Kenny Schachter, London and has participated in group exhibitions at CANADA, New York; Galleri Loyal, Stockholm; Mass MOCA, Massachusetts; and Freight and Volume, New York. As a member of the performance group Slow Jams Band, she performed at MoMA, New York and the NADA Fair, Miami.
MELISSA BROWN & MAT BRINKMAN is presented in conjunction with PictureBox.
M+B
612 North Almont Drive - Los Angeles
Free admission