7.03.2011

Contemporary Art Center Exhibition: "Meanwhile...." Mark Staff Brandl


Contemporary Art Center Press Release:
 
"Meanwhile...." July 11-August 27 Gallery 3R Mark Staff Brandl with Gary Scoles and Thomas Emil Homerin

The trio creates a comic book installation on site from scratch, eventually enveloping the entire room. Visitors are invited to watch the process and interact with the creators. Their activities are documented in video and photos, also becoming part of the completed exhibition.

Opening Reception: Saturday, July 16, 6:30-8:30 pm

When Mark Staff Brandl of Switzerland was invited to exhibit at the Contemporary Art Center, he realized this would be an opportunity to fulfill a long-held desire to reunite his friends Gary Scoles of Pekin and Emil Homerin of Rochester, New York into an active creative team in order to realize one of his Panels Painting-Installations, utilizing as a springboard the steady stream of comic-related ephemeral sketches and doodles he and Scoles consistently produce. Starting on July 11, the team will convene in Gallery 3R to create the work on site.

The three met in 1965, at the age of 10, in fifth grade at Douglas Primary School in Pekin, Illinois. They became fast friends, spending almost every Saturday and Saturday night together for years, through high school, creating original superhero comic books. Mark and Gary were the artists and letterers, Emil the author and editor. All created their own characters, yet each helped to contribute to and develop the others' ideas. Emil bore the brunt of making narrative sense of them all. Although their lives took them in various directions after high school, the three have remained in contact, sending comics, art and related materials to one another and collaborating on projects.

The installation will commence with a batch of collected comic-art-oriented doodles on various scraps and sizes of paper that Brandl and Scoles will have done and collected over the year prior to the exhibition. These have no planned continuity nor are even consciously link-ed or guided in any way. They will be laid out as well as mounted on the walls and serve as the basis for the event and installation. Then Homerin will concoct a narrative from these, telling the artists what to add, complete, extend, or change. Visitors will be invited to come to the Art Center, watch the process and interact with the creators. After a week, an installation-comic will envelop the whole room. The activities will be documented in a video, photos, perhaps even sections of "meta-comic" where sequences about the creation of the work will become part of the completed exhibition.

The opening reception on Saturday, July 16, 6:30-8:30 pm will also honor Minnesota artist Sally J. Bright in the Preston Jackson Gallery. Food & drink will be provided. Music provided by Paul Adams. Admission is free but a donation is requested.

This exhibit is partially supported by a grant from the Illinois Arts Council, a state agency.

Hi-res photos are available.

Mark Staff Brandl: www.markstaffbrandl.com/

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5.01.2011

Julia Roth Installation Comic

A marvelous Gallery Comic Installation by Julia Roth in the Art Academy Liechtenstein. Detail photo.

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9.08.2009

CUNY James Gallery's Silent Pictures Exhibitions with Several Gallery Comics, including a Brandl Painting Installation



Silent Pictures, running from September 1 through October 11 in the James Gallery in NYC focuses on aspects of comic book structure that do not depend on words to advance an image sequence. The exhibition is inspired by artist and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Art Spiegelman's personal collection of wordless comics and graphic novels -- mostly black and white rare artist books from the 1930s. The show will feature a selection of these books, as well as more recent "abstract comics," and a related film program -- all of which investigate essential qualities and aesthetics of this hugely popular medium.

The abstract comics, compiled by art historian and artist Andrei Molotiu for a just released anthology, Abstract Comics Fantagraphics Books, 2009), call attention to the formal mechanisms that underlie all comics. The art gathered by Molotiu emphasizes the dynamic graphics that lead the eye and mind from panel to panel, suggesting that these structural elements are fundamental to the emotional register of the medium. This section of the exhibition features an old-fashioned wire magazine stand ("spinner rack"), which hosts a collection of paintings by Mark Staff Brandl called A History of Composition in Abstract Comic Covers. Done in oil, acrylic and collage on canvas panels, the 30 pieces in this series unite comics, pop art and Pollock-related abstraction with his actual interpretation of the history of composition in painting from Prehistoric times until now.

The James Gallery is located off the lobby of the Graduate Center at 365 Fifth Avenue (between 34th & 35th Streets). Hours are Tuesdays through Fridays, 12-8 pm, and 12-6 pm on Saturdays & Sundays. Admission is free; for more information call 212-817-7138 or visit http://www.gc.cuny.edu/events/art_gallery.htm An opening reception for Silent Pictures will be held on Thursday, September 10, 6-8 pm.

A few details follow.





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12.15.2008

Out of Sequence, Krannert Art Museum Video




A super short (2 min. 35 sec.) TV video clip of the exhibition "Out of Sequence: Under Represented Voices in American Comics," which is on exhibition at the University of Illinois' Krannert Art Museum. This video tours the exhibition with its co-curators, Professor John Jennings and PhD candidate Damian Duffy. Mark Staff Brandl's corner Panels painting-installation and Covers paintings in the spinner rack as well as several of gallery artist C Hill's pieces are prominently featured.

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