Casey Kaplan
MATTHEW BRANNON
Department Store at Night (Five Impossible Films, 1)
Museo Marino Marini
In the last ten years Brannon has created works in which the tension between text and image has always been present as a genuinely constitutive part of the work, even though this relationship has never been conceived as a narrative element between the two parts.
Brannon has recently turned his attention to writing. The books he has written, in the form of a long story, acquire their own autonomy with respect to the sculptures and prints that have always been the centre of his output. By distancing the image from the text, Brannon moves towards a new mode of approach, of proximity between the two, operating in such a way that the works act like amplifiers for the text accompanying them. The viewer/reader assumes an active role in deciphering the story, becoming an element of construction of the whole narrative, completing the experience of the reading with that of the visit to the museum.
At the Museo Marino Marini Brannon has constructed Department Store at Night, where sculptures, prints, fabric flooring and a book recount the cruel and strange nocturnal episode at the heart of a mystery that needs solving.