Stephen Bram

29th March – 29th April 2006
Anna Schwartz Gallery

In this exhi­bi­tion Stephen Bram con­tin­ues his inves­ti­ga­tion of the reit­er­a­tion of con­cept over mate­ri­al­i­ty. With­in these 6 panoram­ic works, focus shifts fur­ther away from the phys­i­cal­ly imme­di­ate sup­port of the paint­ed object, towards a more arche­typ­al inves­ti­ga­tion into space — of how it is staged by the artist, and how it is seen and per­ceived by the view­er. As dis­crete works they are dra­mat­i­cal­ly large, yet still as stan­dard and mod­u­lar as those that have been made before them.

Bram’s new works con­cern them­selves even less with the act of look­ing at a paint­ing, instead, they are more involved with wit­ness­ing a sit­u­a­tion, a wide, cin­e­mat­ic screen into a con­cep­tu­al envi­ron­ment, a phe­nom­e­no­log­i­cal per­spec­tive of ele­ments reced­ing into a spa­tial set­ting specif­i­cal­ly designed for each work. As visu­al exper­i­ments, they are square­ly aimed at one’s abil­i­ty to see and com­pre­hend; to do this in a way that we do every day.

Justin Andrews 2006