Loving...

Matthew Brannon right now, whose art I first saw at the Whitney Biennial last year. Matthew Brannon’s work turns on the opposition—and ever-mounting imbrication—of art and design. After an early stint as a painter, he began to draw his inspiration from those printed materials that mediate everyday life in late-capitalist, early twentyfirst- century America, from posters and advertisements to promotional flyers and take-out menus. But if Brannon’s iconography conjures mass-produced, throwaway sources, his methods are laboriously handcrafted, even old-fashioned: screenprint, letterpress, and lithograph works, often executed in a limited palette and consistent in their graphic rigor. His art seems on first glance disarmingly direct. But as one turns to the text paired with his images for explication or illumination, disorder intervenes.