“Brant / Brennan / Zinsser” Exhibition

Minus Space

[Image: John Zinsser "The Crossing" (2014) Enamel and oil on canvas 24 x 24 in]

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MINUS SPACE presents Brant / Brennan / Zinsser. The exhibition will feature new visceral, yet reductive paintings by the three esteemed New York-based artists Sharon Brant, Michael Brennan, and John Zinsser.

Sharon Brant has produced conceptually and aesthetically rigorous abstract paintings and drawings for more than four decades that commonly blur the lines between media. Her new paintings continue her recent shift away from the hard-edged geometry that ruled her earlier work and present a single, attenuated rectangle with irregular sides, which rests at the bottom edge of the canvas. Rendered primarily in various reds and blacks on white grounds, Brant’s paintings employ a remarkably narrow palette to investigate an animated, fundamental form through a wide array of cumulative marks and subtle gestures. The works allude at once to geometry, architecture, and landscape.

Michael Brennan’s new, petite-format paintings merge geometric and gestural painting. Although monochromatic upon first impression, they employ a subtle array of blacks, grays, and whites, which Brennan tints with discreet amounts of other hues. Color is a core concern for Brennan and his paintings reflect his deep interest in abstraction, monochrome painting, historical photography, and early film. His work possesses a sense of aesthetic economy and he commonly employs no more than two layers of paint in completed works. Painted with a palette knife during a single session in the studio, the paintings juxtapose a single, highly finessed field of color against a solid, white band commonly along the bottom or outside edges of the work.

John Zinsser’s new conceptual paintings are distinguished by their visual clarity and lush materiality. Seemingly spontaneous in appearance, the thickly impastoed surfaces of his paintings are produced strategically. Zinsser employs a broad vocabulary of marks and gestures achieved by brush, palette knife, block printing, and other methods. Merging a wide array of different materials, such as oil, enamel, and spray paint, his color sensibility is resolutely experimental and oscillates between close-value, nearly monochromatic works to luminous, retinally-charged paintings that appear to vibrate off their surfaces.

Sharon Brant (lives Beacon, NY) has exhibited her work internationally for the past four decades, including in Europe, Australasia, Mexico, and the United States. Her recent museum exhibitions include MoMA PS1, Rochester Museum, Everson Museum of Art, Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, and Instituto de Artes Graficas de Oaxaca (Mexico). Brant moved permanently to New York City in 1966 and her work was included several years later in the Whitney Museum of American Art’s Painting Annual in 1972. She exhibited regularly with OK Harris between 1969-1972, A.I.R. Gallery between 1988-1994, and Margaret Thatcher Projects between 1999-2003. In 1968, Brant was one of eight founding members of MUSEUM, A Project of Living Artists, an artist-run exhibition and meeting space located at 729 Broadway in New York City, which was intended as a politically-progressive community center for artists with the goal of supporting “a more alive connection between art and society.” Brant is a member of American Abstract Artists and her work has been reviewed in Artforum, The New York Times, ARTnews, Art International, Arts Magazine, and The Brooklyn Rail, among others.

Michael Brennan (b.1965, Pine Island, FL; lives Brooklyn, NY) has exhibited his work nationally and internationally for the past two decades, including in the United States, Mexico, Belgium, Germany, Australia, and New Zealand. His work has been reviewed in publications including The New York Times, Art in America, ARTnews, Art New England, The Brooklyn Rail, ArtNet Magazine, and NY Arts. His writings and reviews have been published by The Brooklyn Rail, ArtNet Magazine, The Village Voice, The Architect’s Newspaper, American Abstract Artists, and Archives of American Art/Smithsonian Institution, among others. Brennan’s work is included in the collections of the Baltimore Museum of Art, National Gallery of Art, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Jose Museum of Art, American Express, General Dynamics, Daimler AG, and Sony Corporation. Brennan is Adjunct Assistant Professor at Pratt Institute and has previously taught at the School of Visual Arts, Hunter College, and Cooper Union.

John Zinsser (b.1961, New York, NY; lives Brooklyn, NY) has exhibited his work internationally since the late 1980s, including solo and group exhibitions throughout United States, Europe and Asia. He recently mounted solo exhibitions at Peter Blake Gallery (Laguna Beach, CA), Philip Slein Gallery (St. Louis, MO), Graham Gallery (New York, NY), and Kunstgalerie Bonn (Germany). His work can be found in museum and private collections internationally, including the Mint Museum (Charlotte, NC), Wadsworth Atheneum (Hartford, CT), Richard Brown Baker Collection, Yale University Art Gallery (New Haven, CT), and Sammlung Goetz, (Munich), as well as in numerous corporate collections. In addition to his artistic work, Zinsser is a writer, curator, and lecturer. He co-founded the Journal of Contemporary Art in 1988 and has written extensively for publications, such as Art in America, ARTS, Flash Art, ArtNet, and Tema Celeste, among others. Zinsser is Assistant Professor at The New School.