• Brendan Getz
    containers, 2021
    Oil on wood
    24 x 20 inches

Brendan Getz | when the after-image is the image

January 15—March 19, 2022


Carrie Secrist Gallery is pleased to announce when the after-image is the image, a solo presentation of over 70 paintings and a curated selection of objects by Brendan Getz. This is the Bay Area artist’s first solo exhibition in Chicago. The exhibition opens January 15 and continues through February 26, 2022.

You can view the exhibition in person at our gallery located at 900 W. Washington BLVD, Chicago, IL. No appointment is necessary, but If you would like to make one, please visit the Reservation page on our website. In order to keep all visitors and gallery staff safe and healthy, masks and proof of vaccination are required for entry.

Due to the ongoing Covid-19 surge we are forgoing a formal opening. The gallery will be open for normal hours from 11AM to 5PM this Saturday for masked and vaccinated visits. An official celebratory reception is planned for February 26, 2022.

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Through a thoughtfully considered painting practice, Brendan Getz unpacks the rich complexity, depth and nuance of strikingly simple forms and images with an attitude and atmosphere that opens them far beyond their initial approach. For this exhibition, the artist has chosen the title: when the after-image is the image, a nod to the responsive effect produced in the mind’s eye after seeing a vivid image, but also in reference to how a memory of the past can shape the present. Including over 70 paintings and 7 studio objects, this expansive exhibition is installed specifically on site, in the gallery’s discrete rooms and spaces that point intimately to one another. Produced over the past decade, this work includes movements into the pandemic, and its effects of review, reconsideration and change in a multitude of public and private dimensions.

Recalling the artist’s own live-work space, the paintings often depict moments of the domestic and routine in a working studio that doubles as a living room. As the gallery itself is also a former and future domestic space, this doubling of a live-work relationship becomes active throughout the entirety of the exhibition, in exciting and often surprising ways, where the public and the private meet in a discursive encounter. Among the objects installed are the artist’s own studio chairs, a floor mat and a mahl stick, as paint laden peripheral objects presented for review.

As the philosopher Paul Ricoeur puts it, “…how can we help but leap to the plane of collective memory and evoke the sort of hauntedness, described by historians of the present day, which stigmatizes this ‘past that does not pass’?” For Getz, this involves the doubling of familiar perceptual habit as it meets with collective memory– an uncanny source of renewal that renders the conventional strange, and leads to an expanded and hopeful sense of possibility for the future.

In a recent review of the artists work, Susan J. Musich writes: In the tradition of Luc Tuymans and Giorgio Morandi, Getz depicts fetishized, dreamlike domestic objects such as an ice tray, bookends, a toaster, and a drinking glass. He poetically writes, “A cared for object – caring world. A disposable object – disposable world.” Using a minimal palette, subtle color contrasts, shadows, and distinct brush strokes, Getz’s attention to detail demonstrates a caring for his subjects that elevates them above “usual object” status. These lyrical and elegant paintings provide a sense of serenity in these turbulent times. 

Brendan Getz is an artist who works with painting, writing, installation and sound to slow down and attend to a subtle multiplicity of meaning between objects, images and form– homing in on a politics of attention and the nuance of close looking, while proposing care as a radical act. Brendan has exhibited in galleries and institutions throughout the US including the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, the Frist Art Museum in Nashville, the Contemporary Art Center in Las Vegas, and the LeRoy Neiman Center in Chicago. Brendan holds a BFA from Belmont University and an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He works out of Berkeley and Los Angeles and is the co-founder and current co-director of the project space take care in downtown Los Angeles.

Images

  • Brendan Getz
    train view, house painting (blush), 2019
    Oil on canvas
    48 x 36 inches

  • Brendan Getz
    my dad’s birds (red, blue, green), 2019
    Oil on canvas
    30 x 24 inches

  • Brendan Getz
    studio window (east and across), 2020
    Oil on wood
    9 x 8 inches

  • Brendan Getz
    evening and outside (surface company and tones between), 2021
    Oil on wood
    30 x 22 inches

  • Brendan Getz
    valley wall, between the trees and a binocular view, 2021
    Oil on wood
    30 x 20 inches

  • Brendan Getz
    utility light (motion sensing), 2021
    Oil on canvas
    36 x 60 inches

  • Brendan Getz
    windshield painting (glass plane), 2021
    Oil on wood
    20 x 16 inches

  • Installation view: Brendan Getz | when the after-image is the image. Carrie Secrist Gallery, January 15 – February 26, 2022. Photo by Nathan Keay.

  • Installation view: Brendan Getz | when the after-image is the image. Carrie Secrist Gallery, January 15 – February 26, 2022. Photo by Nathan Keay.

  • Installation view: Brendan Getz | when the after-image is the image. Carrie Secrist Gallery, January 15 – February 26, 2022. Photo by Nathan Keay.

  • Installation view: Brendan Getz | when the after-image is the image. Carrie Secrist Gallery, January 15 – February 26, 2022. Photo by Nathan Keay.

  • Installation view: Brendan Getz | when the after-image is the image. Carrie Secrist Gallery, January 15 – February 26, 2022. Photo by Nathan Keay.