Matthew Brannon: To Say the Very Least

"To Say the Very Least" is the first comprehensive publication on the print and installation work of the rising New York artist Matthew Brannon. Everything takes place on the surface, or just under it, in Brannon's work, just as everything is public or takes place in public there. The prints exploit their generic relation to advertising and posters, but the benign appearance of the illustrations, reminiscent of 1950s cookbooks and cocktail manuals, is undercut by the fine print of embossed texts, which teeter towards inappropriate confessions and unpardonable acts. These texts, with their hint of literary genres tinged by noir, are little melodramatic scenarios of success and failure, careerism and alcoholism, substance abuse and sexual misadventure. Each set of prints stages Brannon's principal question, "Why are people their own worst enemies?"