Press Release - "Variants" by Brett Flanigan
Brett Flanigan
”Defectors (8)”
Acrylic on canvas
82 x 62 inches
2021
pt.2 Gallery
Variants
A solo exhibition by
Brett Flanigan
Opening Reception
Saturday, January 8th
Appointment Only 11 - 5pm
Public Opening Reception 6-9 pm
Showing Through February 4th, 2022
Schedule Private Viewing
pt. 2 Gallery is pleased to present Variants, a solo exhibition of new paintings by Brett Flanigan. In the Oakland-based painter’s second solo exhibition with the gallery, Flanigan uses a series of patterns and formalist “rules” to create abstract paintings that in turn interrogate these very rules, their imposition, and the subsequent binary systems they create.
From an initial glance, the paintings in Variants differ in size, scale, palette, and mark making. Yet beneath these formal qualities lies an unifying framework that each individual work initially adheres to. Beginning with the idea of the grid - a fundamental structure in abstract painting that can be traced from Kazimir Malevitch through to Agnes Martin and Mark Bradford - Flanigan distorts the rigid form so that its coherence falls apart. Applying a series of rules relating to color choice, brushstroke, overlap and directionality, these explorations that balance algorithmic processes and formalist elements situate themselves between chaos and pattern.
Brett Flanigan
”Countercurrent multiplier in ¾ time (6)”
Oil on canvas
60 x 46 inches
2021
In the painting “Countercurrent multiplier in ¾ time (6)” a sequence of triangular and diamond forms are created by parallel lines of rhythmic colors. Beyond the deformed grid, Flanigan likens the painting to a musical composition, created in ¾ time. Each cell of the original grid is painted in three colors, yet these three must then adhere to a further division of four segments. Using quick rhythmic brushstrokes in wet oil paint, the initial three colors melange to varying degrees, as the forms they develop invoke concave and convex moments. Despite these triangular and diamond forms that suggest this dimensionality, the algorithm determines that the colors form a spiral, evident only in rare moments of overlapping tonality.
Rosalind Krauss, the esteemed art historian famously noted that “the grid functions to declare the modernity of modern art.” In Flanigan’s paintings, the dissolution of the grid points to the contemporaneity in the art of today. In a time without clear answers to our questions, and when some questions are better left unanswered, the reformed grid anchors a commitment to critical thought. Resolved to shy away from the rigidity of established structures, Flanigan himself follows his self-imposed rules only until a moment of systemic breakdown (read: a mistake, an impulse, a natural deviation, etc). These moments of rupture require an intervention of conscious choice. This supposition encourages thinking outside of the binary, ultimately leading to a more open minded, nuanced, and considered world view.
Brett Flanigan (b. 1986), lives and works in Oakland, CA. Flanigan holds a degree in Biological Sciences from the University of California, Santa Barbara. He works primarily in painting and sculpture. His work has been exhibited in the San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles, New York City, Portland, Atlanta and Chicago, as well as internationally in Hamburg, Germany and Paris, France. Flanigan has also completed a number of public artworks, including a mural at the Lilley Museum in Reno, NV and a large scale public sculpture in downtown Oakland, CA.