2017 Exhibition Schedule Announcement

The Brant Foundation is pleased to announce its upcoming 2017 Spring and Fall exhibitions.

May – October 2017: Animal Farm, curated by Sadie Laska

Beginning Sunday, May 14, 2017, The Brant Foundation Art Study Center will present a group exhibition curated by Sadie Laska, including works from The Brant Collection and loans from museums, galleries and other private collections. Artists in the exhibition will include 1980s pop icons from the collection, such as Kenny Scharf and Jean-Michel Basquiat, alongside artists whose work has been influenced by pop, politics and media, such as Nina Chanel Abney, Katherine Bernhardt, Lizzi Bougatsos, Joe Bradley, Sarah Braman, William N. Copley, Thornton Dial, Wally Hedrick, Joyce Pensato, Carol Rama, Peter Saul, Josh Smith, Spencer Sweeney, Henry Taylor and Sue Williams.

You feel a swamp. The world flattened, spun faster, capsized, and now a frog king. It’s ok to laugh. We’ve been here before.

Animal Farm is a show of works revolving around this sense of spiritual dislocation and eternal return. Since the advent of print displaced it’s representational function, fine art has existed as a history of perverted exchanges between subcultures and mass media. Mickey becomes Andy; Andy becomes a bright t-shirt.  A selection of works by Keith Haring, Kenny Scharf, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Katherine Bernhardt, Joyce Pensato, Tyson Reeder, Joe Bradley, Chris Martin, Sarah Braman and many others, sketch a story that slides from figurative iconography to totemic abstraction, charting a world in churn; in print, in space, and on canvas. Animal Farm reminds us that color is as material as culture, and that fantasy has long been a way to resist: identity, oppression, boredom. Freak out, or don’t.

– Sadie Laska, 2017

November 2017: Jason Rhoades

The Brant Foundation Art Study Center will present an exhibition by Jason Rhoades (1965-2006) featuring a selection of works from The Brant Collection and significant works from throughout his career, including The Grand Machine / THEAREOLA, (2002); and Untitled (from the body of work: My Madinah: In pursuit of my ermitage…), (2004).

Born in Newcastle, California, Rhoades received his M.F.A. from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1993, where he was a student of Paul McCarthy’s. Later that year, he joined David Zwirner — becoming part of the gallery’s original roster of artists — and had his first New York solo show.

Rhoades’s work has been exhibited internationally since the 1990s. Mainly recognized throughout Europe during his lifetime, in the past few years exhibitions in his native country have received critical acclaim. His first solo presentation at a European institution was held at the Kunsthalle Basel in 1996. Other international venues which have organized solo shows include the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, The Netherlands; Kunsthalle Nürnberg, Nuremberg, Germany (both 1998); Deichtorhallen Hamburg, Germany (1999); Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien (MUMOK), Vienna (2002); Le Magasin – Centre National d’Art Contemporain de Grenoble, France (2005); and the Centro de Arte Contemporáneo de Málaga, Spain (2006).

In 2013, Jason Rhoades, Four Roads marked the first American museum exhibition of the artist’s work, organized by the Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. In 2014, the exhibition traveled internationally to the Kunsthalle Bremen, Germany, followed by the BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead, England in 2015.

Museum collections which hold works by the artist include the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Tate Gallery, London; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.