October 25 – December 7, 2013
Gallery Y: Matthew Woodward, “The Forgiveness Beneath the Mountain or Sleep, Repose, and Duration in the Brokenhearted Year”
Gallery X: Jason Brammer, “Into the Ocean of Being”
Opening Reception: Friday, October 25, 2013, 6-9pm
Artist Talk: Saturday, November 16, 2013, 2-4pm

---

Linda Warren Projects is proud to present exhibitions by two young, Chicago-based artists: Matthew Woodward’s “The Forgiveness Beneath the Mountain or Sleep, Repose, and Duration in the Brokenhearted Year” and Jason Brammer’s “Into The Ocean Of Being.” While their oeuvres clearly differ, both artists create works that fuse expert draftsmanship with sculptural and found material, and they also share a particular aesthetic that hinges upon wear, age and patina. The rust, grit and deterioration present in each artist’s works are means to different ends; for Woodward, they serve as a testimony to his laborious making process, and for Brammer, the visual manifestation of the passage of time grounds the otherworldliness of his enigmatic content.

“The Forgiveness Beneath the Mountain or Sleep, Repose, and Duration in the Brokenhearted Year,” Matthew Woodward’s third solo exhibition with the gallery, marks a significant change in his practice. Known for his meticulous, hand-drawn renderings of the decorative details found on the architecture of urban settings, Woodward here transitions from the sole use of the traditional graphite-on-paper media to a tactile, experimental multimedia practice. In this exhibition, the artist casts a wide net, sourcing media like construction material, plastic, textiles and found objects on which to enact his signature precise, yet aggressive drawings.

Woodward has long used architectural fleur-de-lis and ornament as tropes for his explorations into gesture and process. With the addition of spackle, glue, bed sheets and tarp into his works (elements Woodward sees as “feed[ing] back to the body, to skin and memory”), he infuses a heightened sense of humanity into his stony, rigid imagery. In Irving Street, the sheet that bears the overworked drawing is smeared, stained and soiled, hanging from the wall onto the floor as if battered from some unknowable circumstances. Irving 5 is so laden with layers of graphite, collage and found material that it appears to be nearly collapsing under its own weight, while Tenth Street 4 seemingly oozes and drips a viscous substance from its center. Contrasting the organic with the unnatural, and the fragile with the concrete, Woodward’s works manage to convey the inherent vulnerability of the human body via the manmade forms and materials that occupy our everyday lives.

In Gallery X, Jason Brammer transforms the space with his exhibition, “Into The Ocean Of Being.” Here, symmetry and harmony are paramount as a mural of a vast horizon grounds a room of multimedia, wall-bound objects. With the antique futurism of a steampunk aesthetic coupled with the artist’s masterful trompe l’oeil painting, Brammer’s works possess an otherworldly aura. In pieces like Binding The Boundless II, what appears to be a dimensional folded screen of wooden planks held together with rusty hinges at the joints is actually a completely flat plane, the “shadows” cast by the twine passing through grommet holes painted to such a degree of realism that the illusion truly challenges perception and understanding.

Accompanying the visual components of “Into The Ocean Of Being” is a soundtrack composed for the exhibition by Brammer’s childhood friend and former bandmate, Carl Broemel of My Morning Jacket. This audio accompaniment is alternately atmospheric and discordant, with tension and harmony ebbing and flowing like the waves in the oceanic horizon that appears in each of Brammer’s pieces. In pieces like Behind The Clouds Of Thought, calm water and skies meeting at a foggy, obscured horizon are visible through circular “portals” that act as a kind of intermediary between our world and this alluring alternate reality of mystery and imagination.

—

Matthew Woodward’s drawings and installations have appeared in venues throughout the United States and abroad including the Chicago Cultural Center, The University Club of Chicago, the Union League Club of Chicago, the Elmhurst Art Museum, Janine Bean Gallery in Berlin, and The Drawing Room in Budapest, amongst many others. The artist has participated in artist residency programs at Urbanfuse Residency in Berlin, The Cill Rialaig Project in Ireland, the Alfred and Trafford Klots International Program in France, and the Vermont Studio Center. Woodward received his MFA from the New York Academy of Art and his BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. This is Woodward’s third solo exhibition with Linda Warren Projects.

Jason Brammer has exhibited profusely throughout Chicago and the Midwest with exhibitions at the Union League Club of Chicago, Firecat Projects, the Rockford Art Museum, Governor’s State University, the Harrison Center for the Arts in Indianapolis and La Luz De Jesus Gallery in Los Angeles amongst many others, and as the winner of the “Red Bull Curates Canvas Cooler” art competition, he will be exhibiting at SCOPE Miami this December. The artist’s mural works have been commissioned by companies such as LinkedIn, Dark Matter Coffee and IV Lab Recording Studio. Brammer has designed concert posters for the band My Morning Jacket, Todd Rundgren and Robert Plant & The Band Of Joy, and has done live painting and promotional material for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Brammer studied at both the Savannah College of Art and Design, and Indiana University. This is Brammer’s first exhibition at Linda Warren Projects.

Linda Warren Projects is located at 327 N. Aberdeen, Ste.151, Chicago, IL 60607. For more information, please contact Linda Warren Projects at 312.432.9500 or chris@lindawarrenprojects.com. www.lindawarrenprojects.com