Amy Brener at Jack Barrett

Artist: Amy Brener

Exhibition title: Consolarium

Venue: Jack Barrett, New York, US

Date: October 27 – December 20, 2019

Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Jack Barrett, New York

A consolarium is a place for consoles and consolation, lined with buttons and dials, storage tables and junk drawers, the faces of lost loved ones and relics from their lives. It is a colli sion site: time periods crash and interweave, while meaningful and throwaway objects fuse into hybrid structures. Anachronistic thinking takes place here, and existential musings are transmitted through circuits of dollar store junk.

Within Amy Brener’s sculptures, disparate matter is compressed and congealed to produce forms that are familiar yet strange, resembling otherworldly monuments, reliquaries, fountains, cakes and garments. Largely housed under the umbrella title “Omni-Kit”, these works are containment units for stuﬀ that is useful, but disposable and overlooked–spillage from a society steeped in consumerism. Miscellanea such as flossers, cocktail forks, auto fuses, vitamins and Q-tips are recontextualized inside of seemingly devotional frameworks, demanding reverence.

A sense of urgency is marred across the surfaces of Brener’s Omni-Kits, which look like they’ve been dragged through time, accreting detritus along the way. With its sumptuous layers of grape foam, Omni-Kit (Eostra), a fertility goddess/storage rack, appears both edible and noxious, eliciting simultaneous desire and repulsion. Its sister sculpture, Flexi-Shield (Eostra), a double sized silicone breastplate that hangs in the adjacent room, retracts from viscerality into symbol-ism, a bodiless sheath encasing a multitude of items. Forming patterns within casts of plastic packaging, these objects operate as language or code, as though bridging communication with future humans.

Other sculptures in the exhibition seek to serve bodies instead of mirror them, bearing oﬀerings and suggesting mysterious functionalities. The Omni-Kit (Votive) series supplies sustenance through objects cast into deviled egg trays and tells mismatched time through bubbled watch faces. Fashioned in technicolor green and pink hues, Omni-Kit (Birthday) is temporally ambiguous, evoking 1950s Jell-O molds, Medieval architecture, Baroque decoration and Art Deco motifs. Laptop keyboard keys crusting its edges suggest current technologies, and their projected repurposing in eras to come.

A cast of Brener’s deceased father’s face appears frequently in these works, an artifact appropriated from his sculpture studio. Through miniaturization and repetition, it possesses both ornamental and talismanic qualities. For Brener, its copies hold the magic of an original that will never exist again in our reality but may persist in some other layer of time. By merging this emotionally charged imagery with everyday ephemera, Brener is attempting to flatten hierarchies between the sacred and mundane, and filter cosmological questions through the gritty membrane of our material present.

This is Amy Brener’s first solo show in New York, and second show with the gallery. She was born in Victoria, BC, Canada and is currently based in Queens, New York. Since graduating with an MFA from Hunter College in 2010, her work has exhibited at galleries and institutions in the US, Canada, Europe and China. Highlights include MoMA PS1 and Socrates Sculpture Park in New York, the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas, Galerie Pact in Paris, Reyes Projects in Detroit, Wentrup Gallery in Berlin, MacLaren Art Centre in Ontario and Riverside Art Museum in Beijing. Her work has been featured in publications such as CURA, The New York Times, Hyperallergic, V Magazine, Artnet News and The Brooklyn Rail.

Amy Brener, Consolarium, 2019, exhibition view, Jack Barrett, New York

Amy Brener, Omni-Kit (Eeostra), 2019, Urethane foam and resin, platinum silicone, Hydrocal, pigment, lavender buds, larkspur and marguerite flowers, sand, miscellaneous objects, 85 x 47 x 18 inches

Amy Brener, Omni-Kit (Votive 1), 2019, Urethane foam and resin, platinum silicone, Hydrocal, pigment, chrysanthemum flowers, sand, miscellaneous objects, 40 x 15 x 15 inches

Amy Brener, Omni-Kit (Votive 2), 2019, Urethane foam, platinum silicone, Hydrocal, Aqua-Resin, pigment, sand, miscellaneous objects, 38 x 15 x 15 inches

Amy Brener, Omni-Kit (Votive 3), 2019, Urethane foam and resin, platinum silicone, Hydrocal, Aqua-Resin, pigment, marguerite flower, sand, miscellaneous objects, 30 x 15 x 15 inches

Amy Brener, Omni-Kit (Votive 4), 2019, Urethane foam and resin, platinum silicone, Hydrocal, Aqua-Resin, pigment, marguerite and larkspur flowers, sand, miscellaneous objects, 30 x 15 x 15 inches

Amy Brener, Consolarium, 2019, exhibition view, Jack Barrett, New York

Amy Brener, Flexi-Shield (Eostra), 2019, Platinum silicone, pigment, larkspur and chrysanthemum, flowers, fern leaves, miscellaneous objects, 72 x 50 x 8 inches

Amy Brener, Consolarium, 2019, exhibition view, Jack Barrett, New York

Amy Brener, Omni-Kit (Emblem), 2019, Urethane foam and resin, platinum silicone, pigment, lavender buds, larkspur flowers, sand, miscellaneous objects, 49 x 17 x 6 inches

Amy Brener, Consolarium, 2019, exhibition view, Jack Barrett, New York

Amy Brener, Omni-Kit (Roulette), 2019, Urethane foam, platinum silicone, Hydrocal, Aqua-Resin, pigment, sand, fern leaves, larkspur flowers, miscellaneous objects, 50 x 27 x 8 inches

Amy Brener, Consolarium, 2019, exhibition view, Jack Barrett, New York

Amy Brener, Omni-Kit (Birthday), 2019, Urethane foam and resin, platinum silicone, Hydrocal, pigment, chrysanthemum flowers, sand, miscellaneous objects, 69 x 24 x 16 inches

Amy Brener, Omni-Kit (Mantle), 2019, Urethane foam and resin, platinum silicone, pigment, chrysanthemum flowers, sand, miscellaneous objects, 80 x 24 x 6 inches