Casey Kaplan
5 Must-See Gallery Shows in New York: Ron Nagle, Keegan McHargue, and More
SEPTEMBER 21, 2015
BY SCOTT INDRISEK
Brannon’s series of new works — mainly using a letterpress, serigraph, or silkscreen technique — purports to “explore emotional registers within the context of the Vietnam/American War.” That mission, however, is obscured, or at least softened, by the nostalgic pull of Brannon’s aesthetic. Most of the pieces are forms of still life in which various objects and products seemingly suspended in midair. Brand names dominate — Chesterfield, Western Union, Heinz, Sno Sheen — with the occasional outlier item provoking a joke: a bottle of Liquid Paper, for in- stance, beneath a diploma from the New York Psychoanalytic Society, as if poking fun at Freud’s mistakes. The pall of war is mostly lost amid the clutter of domesticity and consumer goods, which is, perhaps, the point. A hint of the wider world, though, pops up in “Ready or Not,” 2015, in which a folded Order to Report for Armed Forces Physical Examination sits alongside a box of corn flakes, a novelty greeting card displaying Snoopy as Joe Cool, and a shuttlecock.