We have great pleasure in presenting new works by American artist Troy Brauntuch (*1954 in New Jersey).
Over the last 25 years his works are exhibited and collected in numerous private and public collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art New York and the Museum of Modern Art New York. Last year Troy Brauntuch’s paintings were included in the Whitney Biennale at the Whitney Museum NY. Troy Brauntuch is extraordinary Professor at the Department of Art and History of Art at the University of Texas in Austin and divides his time between New York and Austin.
Troy Brauntuch has been exploring media images for some time now, formulating his scepticism towards their truth content with the help of photos and drawings in pencil and chalk. He particularly likes to make drawings after photographs, which he selects with great care: be they motifs from his personal surroundings, ominous scenarios, scenes of violence or ambiguous situations. In the course of this transferral process, he investigates the connection between the images and their ostensible meaning and message, while at the same time unsettling our perceptions and preconceived ideas. Drawing on black-dyed cotton with white Conté crayon, he creates limitless, fathomless space – a depth that lies behind all appearance. Out of what look at first like monochrome pictures, spectral motifs gradually emerge from a darkness seemingly fashioned from velvet veils. It requires intense concentration to make out the motifs at all – a cat asleep on a crumpled velvet sofa, golfing gloves lying on a patterned coat, sports shoes tossed on the floor and dusty shirts stored away on shelves. Making ingenious use of reduced lighting, Brauntuch lends materiality and substance to these things that exist in the dark. This is the artist’s way of recreating the representational conditions of photography through drawing. And with that he manages to slow down the speed with which we devour the images that whizz round the earth in split seconds, and layer upon unexpected layer peels away before our eyes.
[Text: Dominique von Burg]