Matthew Brannon at Casey Kaplan / Michael Krebber at Greene Naftali

Guest Post by Pamela Fraser

Two shows up simultaneously this month in New York seemed ripe for comparison, both having text at the heart of theatrical approaches to exhibition making. Great titles to both exhibitions, Matthew Brannon’s Gentlemen’s Relish and Michael Krebber’s  C-A-N-V-A-S, Uhutrust, Jerry Magoo and guardian.co.uk Painting.

Matthew Brannon, installation shots, Casey Kaplan Gallery, Gentlemen’s Relish, 2011

Brannon’s show is a gallery-as-stage. Unlike the work of Karen Kilimnik, whose period-sets buttress the paintings that are always clearly the main event, Brannon’s set doesn’t read as way to situate or enhance objects, but as the work itself. The paintings and sculptural objects are props and backdrops in a scenario, playing subordinate to a whole, with the text perhaps, playing the leading role. The paintings are not approached as individual arenas of activity, but are more akin to decorative screens. As paintings, the gray-scale floral print patterns seem intentionally mild, so it’s not painting as object that sparks excitement here, but the refusal to be paintings in the customary sense.

The text in Brannon’s letterpress prints, drawings, and sculptures place the viewer inside of a plot involving a sexual frustration and deviancy. Bits of text can make one gasp (made me gasp) with their raw vulnerability, which is heightened by being packaged-not just within the pretenses of the well-mannered Noir-ish and WASPy worlds conjured, but by popping out of constraints in unexpected ways, amidst self-conscious play with forms of signification. The third-person narrative allows a psychological and emotional content to co-mingle with the pleasure and wit of the high-style artifice.

Krebber’s show, a few blocks north, is comprised up of tight rows of many uniformly sized canvasses on which the artist sketchily copied art blog pages from specific sources. The press release informs that he sees this activity as the following: “By parasitizing the negative socio-pedagogical influence networked painting, Krebber agency to hasten collapse.” Hard to tell if this is an awkward translation, art-speak, or poetic form, but it does let us know that the paintings intend to be parasitic, dependent creatures related to Brannon’s parts-of-a-whole; a curious and provocative approach.

selections from Michael Krebber, C-A-N-V-A-S, Uhutrust, Jerry Magoo and guardian.co.uk Painting, Greene Naftali, 2011

While the particular art-blog source material is made quite clear, Krebber’s signature light touch in this case renders things vague. I’m a fan of his sleight-of-hand approach to painting, and his self-described ‘empty appropriation’ strategy, but I began to wish the artist had been as trenchant and trashy as some of what he reproduced here. The artist as neutral copyist worked to great power and effect in Richter’s 18^th October 1977, but with the art-world content, things feel a bit parochial and insider-y. Even after institutional critique, the subject of art world machinations and dialogues may be ripe for scrutinizing, but viewing these paintings apes the passivity of trolling the internet.

Dead (Tote), 1988, oil on canvas, 62×73 cm

Perhaps this is the point. Viewers leave the exhibition with the same diffused series of under-developed thoughts that we usually get from these sorts of dialogues. Krebber’s show is alternatively as engaging, and un-engaging, as blog posts are (acknowledging that this is a blog post). Alternatively, Brannon’s show is an immersive set-up that places the viewer inside of the production. In it, aridity and restraint work toward the making of an elegant, gripping thriller where everything is over-stylized, where plaintive characters are completely over the top. Yet one leaves the show with a convincing and forceful sense of haunting peculiarity.

Matthew Brannon
Gentlemen’s Relish
Casey Kaplan Gallery
525 W21 St
http://caseykaplangallery.com/

Thru December 17th

Michael Krebber
C-A-N-V-A-S, Uhutrust, Jerry Magoo and guardian.co.uk Painting
Greene Naftali
508 W26 St, 8 fl
http://www.greenenaftaligallery.com/

Thru November 19

Pamela Fraser is an artist represented by Casey Kaplan in New York and Galerie Schmidt Maczollek in Cologne, Germany. She lives in Charlotte, Vermont.