MORE OBJECT : Mai Braun
January 06, 2006 — February 05, 2006
MAI BRAUN : MORE OBJECT
in the project space: a video installation by Tanja Koponen
January 6 – February 5, 2006
Opening reception: Friday, January 6, 7 – 10 p.m.
Brooklyn Fire Proof is pleased to present More Object, Mai Braun’s debut solo exhibition in New York, comprising of a large-scale installation and several free-standing sculptures. Braun’s work draws on everyday materials—house paint, cardboard, lumber and papier-mâché—to make objects that are diverse in form and color but always characterized by a sense of the hand-built and homemade. Largely improvised, Braun makes her sculptures with a playful irreverence; geometric constructions are built of found cardboard, papier-mâché rocks teeter on stilts of scrap wood. Her work attempts to locate a balance between humor and gravity, precision and irregularity, order and entropy.
Braun has also been making work by juxtaposing images taken from varying media sources with three-dimensional objects that highlight certain visual aspects of the photographs. Though the sculptures are a kind of formal response to the images, they are nonetheless undermined by the subject matter depicted by the images: often war zones and natural disasters. The viewer is forced to switch back and forth between the theater of current events and the naiveté of the objects, experiencing a circular conversation within the work itself.
Mai Braun was born in Berlin in 1970. She received her MA from London’s Royal College of Art (1997) and her work has been included in exhibitions in New York at Brooklyn Fire Proof, Margaret Thatcher Projects, and the Bronx Museum of Art, and in Texas at institutions such as The Locker Plant – Chinati Foundation, the Arlington Museum of Art, and DiverseWorks; Braun will also be presenting her work in Finland at Kluuvi Galleria in March 2006. She was artist-in-residence at the Chinati Foundation in Marfa, TX in 2005, and has been the recipient of several fellowships and prizes from major institutions such as the Bronx Museum and the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, TX. Her work has been reviewed in publications such as Art In America and The Houston Chronicle. Braun lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.
In the project space is Corralejo, 2001, a video installation by Finnish artist Tanja Koponen. In this piece, complete darkness is punctuated by the light and sound of passing vehicles to reveal a landscape that is defined by these intermittent moments. Also included is a related two-channel video installation, Hanna and Katja, Katja and Hanna, 2001. Two young women sit in the backseat of a moving car, listening to heavy metal music, each quietly gazing out their respective windows. The aggression of the soundtrack makes a clear contrast to the safe, tranquil interior space of the vehicle, and also to the private mental space belonging to each woman.
Born, raised and currently living in Helsinki, Koponen received degrees in Photography and Media Arts from the Lahti Institute of Design, the Academy of Fine Arts in Finland, and the Slade School of Fine Arts in London. She has exhibited her work internationally in exhibitions and video festivals; this exhibition is the first presentation of her work in New York.
Financial assistance for Tanja Koponen’s presentation is provided by FRAME, Finnish Fund for Art Exchange and AVEK, The Promotion Centre for Audiovisual Culture.
Gallery hours are Saturday and Sunday, 12 – 6 pm or during the week by appointment. For inquiries, please contact Jessica Lin Cox at 718 302 4702 or at jessica@brooklynfireproof.com.