Brandon Bauer & Colin Matthes
October 1 through October 27th, 2007
This exhibition brings together the work of Milwaukee-based artists Colin Matthes and Brandon Bauer and features work from Matthes’ ongoing series Everyday Transactions, and Bauer’s Soldier series. The exhibition also features a series of large scale collaborative paintings and drawings.
In the work of both artists, one can see an honest search for understanding of the mechanisms that drive war and conflict and sympathy for all those affected. The work often presents more questions than conclusions and in contemplating the work a rich and layered interpretation unfolds. These artists seek to see the whole situation and ultimately to find a new way forward. A common motif in both artists work is the soldier, depicted at once as a fortified mass, as protector, as a vulnerable human being, and as a disposable resource.
In Matthes’ work, one sees an artist striving to understand the mechanisms of conflict, often creating paradoxical scenarios that include business transactions, leisure activities, and elements of warfare. The work asks questions about humanity and our relationships in this globalized world. In Bauer’s Soldier series, the work shows a pervasive sympathy for the soldiers fighting and dying from an unseen enemy. The works on display by both artists are two sides of the same coin. These works question the cost of war, as well as its effect.
In a time of divisive politics it is easy for those on any side of an issue to offer sound byte solutions to the complex situations that face our world. It is refreshing to find two artists engaged in these issues and unafraid to tackle them in all of their complexity, and yet both artists speak directly and honestly in their distinctive works.
For more information, please contact the gallery at 414.331.8635.
Brandon Bauer
Brandon Bauer is a multi-disciplinary artist living and working in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. His work focuses on intersections and hybrid processes within the disciplines of painting, drawing, printmaking, photography, and video all with a strong collage element and topical subject. His work explores the relationship between image, abstraction, and text. Brandon’s artwork has been exhibited nationally and internationally in galleries, museums, alternative art spaces, and screened in new media festivals. In January of 2004 Brandon’s work was included in the “Art Against War” exhibition at the World Social Forum in Mumbai, India. Brandon’s video work has been screened in the Aces(s) electronic media festival in Pau, France, The European Media Arts Festival in Osnabruck, Germany, and at Project 101 in Paris among several other national and international venues. Brandon’s work has been produced in DVD editions, used as illustration for various editorial publications and books, and has been published in poster editions.
Colin Matthes
Colin Matthes makes drawings, prints, installations, and zines. Recent projects include Animals and Workers, which explores relationships between animals and workers in food production and Everyday Transactions, which considers the connections between business, warfare, and leisure in contemporary American life. Colin’s artwork has been exhibited in Toronto, Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, Milwaukee, Copenhagen, Denmark, Madrid, Spain, and Schrattenburg, Austria. Colin works collaboratively with the Street Art Workers (www.streetartworkers.org), the “Cut and Paint” zine project (www.cutandpaint.org), and the Just Seeds / Visual Resistance Artist Cooperative (www.justseeds.org). His work can be viewed at http://www.ideasinpictures.org
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