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Friday, May 21, 2010

Visual Art Currently Hanging: Matt Browning

Posted by on Fri, May 21, 2010 at 10:00 AM

Matt Browning's entire show at Lawrimore Project this month is a small army of what look like ceramics.

Actually they're wood objects, each one hand-whittled from a single piece of wood over many, many hours, following the folk-art tradition of whimsies. They sit quietly and almost weightlessly—you'd be amazed how light they are in your hands; ask to touch them—in the back corner of the back room at the gallery.

Each object is only six, maybe seven inches high and shaped like a funnel standing on three legs over a base. (They're sold one by one; the price for one is $300, for those who've asked about starting collections over in Questionland.)

When the whittling was finished, Browning took pine sap he'd collected, used wood from the same logs he'd found for the carvings to fuel a fire, and boiled/reduced the sap to a tar. He poured the brown bubbly stuff into the funnels—and in each case it froze up at a different moment in the process, leaving some of the funnels drippy and some dry on the outside. Over time, the sap will move ever so slightly and in unpredictable ways, if simply left alone.

Browning2.jpg

Usually this room has benches, a long table, a fireplace, and several works of art on the walls and on shelves and pedestals. All of that has been cleared out this month, and the fireplace covered over. All for these majestic understatements in the corner.

browning1.jpg

browning.jpg

 

Comments (5) RSS

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1
I love the idea of a piece of art that will change over time.
Posted by Strath http://pacific-standard.blogspot.com on May 21, 2010 at 10:36 AM
2
Matt Browning makes great work.
Posted by Eric on May 21, 2010 at 11:22 AM
3
This work is a teaser of huge proportions. The idea that each of these tarred objects is the work is actually silly but Matt doesn't care if the whole thing is taken wrongly. That's part of the artist's game here. The work is the whole room for heaven sake! To buy one of these little parts as a collector is to kind of attack or dismantle the work. Matt doesn't care. It's in to not care or be sort of indifferent. There may be many ways to understand this work, and if I understand it right, he doesn't care which way you go. There seems to be a sense of major irony here about gallery and art experience. Matt is in a playful mood and ever so philosophical about what is happening. Philosophy here being the great questions about what the hell art is. Jen, the whole room is the understatement but easily missed as such. The room's environment has become part of the work and this can't be bought for $300. The work maybe can't actually be bought and that is part of the fun and the questions being raised. Matt is full of so many wonderful questions and oh so contemporary impulses as artist. There's something extremely fresh here. He's not alone. We are lucky to have a good number of Seattle based artists exploring the same ironies and impulses as acceptable and proper. How damn interesting! The revolution lives. This is art that is frik'n fun and quite beautiful.
Posted by El Whappottito on May 24, 2010 at 7:12 PM
4
This work is a teaser of huge proportions. The idea that each of these tarred objects is the work is actually silly but Matt doesn't care if the whole thing is taken wrongly. That's part of the artist's game here. The work is the whole room for heaven sake! To buy one of these little parts as a collector is to kind of attack or dismantle the work. Matt doesn't care. It's in to not care or be sort of indifferent. There may be many ways to understand this work, and if I understand it right, he doesn't care which way you go. There seems to be a sense of major irony here about gallery and art experience. Matt is in a playful mood and ever so philosophical about what is happening. Philosophy here being the great questions about what the hell art is. Jen, the whole room is the understatement but easily missed as such. The room's environment has become part of the work and this can't be bought for $300. The work maybe can't actually be bought and that is part of the fun and the questions being raised. Matt is full of so many wonderful questions and oh so contemporary impulses as artist. There's something extremely fresh here. He's not alone. We are lucky to have a good number of Seattle based artists exploring the same ironies and impulses as acceptable and proper. How damn interesting! The revolution lives. This is art that is frik'n fun and quite beautiful.
Posted by El Whappottito on May 24, 2010 at 7:15 PM
5
This work is a teaser of huge proportions. The idea that each of these tarred objects is the work is actually silly but Matt doesn't care if the whole thing is taken wrongly. That's part of the artist's game here. The work is the whole room for heaven sake! To buy one of these little parts as a collector is to kind of attack or dismantle the work. Matt doesn't care. It's in to not care or be sort of indifferent. There may be many ways to understand this work, and if I understand it right, he doesn't care which way you go. There seems to be a sense of major irony here about gallery and art experience. Matt is in a playful mood and ever so philosophical about what is happening. Philosophy here being the great questions about what the hell art is. Jen, the whole room is the understatement but easily missed as such. The room's environment has become part of the work and this can't be bought for $300. The work maybe can't actually be bought and that is part of the fun and the questions being raised. Matt is full of so many wonderful questions and oh so contemporary impulses as artist. There's something extremely fresh here. He's not alone. We are lucky to have a good number of Seattle based artists exploring the same ironies and impulses as acceptable and proper. How damn interesting! The revolution lives. This is art that is frik'n fun and quite beautiful.
Posted by El Whapottito on May 24, 2010 at 7:18 PM

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