November 18, 2023 - December 23, 2023
Gallery reception: Saturday, November 18 from 2:00 to 5:00 pm
We are pleased to announce the exhibition “Gerard Brane: Recent Work.”
Join us for an opening reception on Saturday, November 18 from 2pm to 5pm. “Gerard Brane: Recent Work” is presented in conjunction with “Susan Singer: ‘Bodies’ (1977) and Related Artworks.” Both shows continue through December 23 at as-is.la
Tip of the iceberg.
This is the thought that pops to mind when considering the recent paintings of veteran Los Angeles artist Gerard Brane (b. 1947, Latrobe PA); paintings which, to follow the analogy, are as charmingly simple on their face as they are complex (and just a bit dangerous) beneath the surface.
Each of the seventeen smallish (30 x 24”) oil on canvas paintings on view features the image of a single vase. Though easily identified as such, the vase-idea is transformed by the artist into an always beautiful and consistently inventive symbol rather than offering a plausible representation of an actual thing. Indeed, it quickly becomes apparent that these are works of the human imagination and that there are no crates filled with still life props gathering dust somewhere in the artist’s studio.
There are however—extending the iceberg metaphor further—more than thirty cardboard boxes containing ten finished paintings each; which means that there are well more than three hundred of these thematically related artworks all now stacked floor to ceiling in the artist’s studio. The individual boxes, stamped “Country of origin: Cambodia,” are the very same ones Brane’s unpainted canvases arrive in and, when completed by the artist, go back into for safe storage.
But not before they are documented and—this is the important part—posted on Instagram where, since April of 2021, another vase-image has appeared every few days to the delight of the artist’s followers. Indeed, it is fair to say that while entirely hand-painted, Brane’s larger art project is better understood as a digital one and “native to Instagram” which supplies the work its first and best context of reception. No art gallery required.
Nonetheless, the temptation to present this work in a conventional setting can be too strong to resist. So while the selection of paintings on view may, by necessity, fall short of expressing the full extent of Brane’s ambitious enterprise they still might, if persuasive and attractive enough—as these paintings certainly are—substitute for it just fine.