#sitebrooklyn

After seeing Brett’s work at the Handpulled Prints show at the Site:Brooklyn Gallery I knew I had to share his work.  What a great example of postdigital printmaking.  His use of digital to show common objects , some of which are no longer necessary in our high tech age in technically rigorous prints is a wonder to behold.

Interoffice

Growing up, both my parents were employed by the schools I attended. These envelopes with their use and re-use came to represent a reverentially “adult” mode of communication. To a child this imbued every mundane office memo with a kind of fetishized, clandestine nature.

Liquors

These type of “vice bags” are an ever present part of life in nearly every stratum of urban culture. It is an object that carries vast weight as both a cultural icon and a standard of functional design.

Untitled Document 02

Part of a new series, this print combines a fascination with predigital graph and logarithmic papers with the disposable digital documents that have supplanted them. The folded corner icon was a monumental leap forward in graphic user interfaces. By grafting the two together we are forced to consider the gravity of each.

Correspondence 04 (One Fare)

Part of a six print series, Correspondence 04 is a depiction of an unused airmail envelope. I approached this suite of prints from a fascination with the legacy of predigital communication and the highly bespoke nature of design that communication came to inhabit. Each envelope in the series is scanned containing an object with totemic value that can be seen, if only subtly, in the final print.

Artist Statement

The common overlooked. The legibility of all things shifts as they travel through time, shedding or accumulating value and significance. My current work focuses on this mutability by situating essentially valueless common objects like a manila envelope or plastic bag into the hyper focus of an editioned print on paper. This approach comes out of the photo realism painting genre of the 20th century. In this case, wresting the fetish of the hand from the canvas and re-purposing it on the computer screen.

Paramount in each case is the uncontaminated nature of the source. The unused object becomes the referent and approaches a kind of transubstantiation to an ideal form. With each new object’s inclusion a paradigm is invented. This set of rules can then be used to identify variations of the original that warrant inclusion. In doing so the single phrase resolves into a vernacular.

The success of my work is dependent on this level of realism, unencumbered by stylistic advances. Utilizing a form of silkscreen that incorporates digital and hand manipulation, I am able to architecturally reconstruct these objects as prints. The medium allows me to tease out the subtle nuances of materiality intrinsic to the most innocuous of two dimensional objects. Working from highly detailed scans gives my process firmer roots in life­drawing than simulacrum. Slowly rendering images, pixel by pixel, each layer of ink becomes a facet of original physicality. This fossilization allows for an archaeological dismantling and re­assimilation of those objects as icons with a fresh context that is both personal and ecumenical.- Brett Groves

forthestate.com/editions/brett-groves