Brian Getnick (US)
Residencey September - October - November 2007


www.briangetnick.com

I am working within someone else’s imagination.  Despite intuition, I see that my ideas come from an ideology and tradition that are not my own. Fortunately materials have their own defenses; the fact that stuff falls apart gives me hope. I build the Frankenstein monster knowing full well that he will surprise me, break loose, and seek freedom. In drawing, sculpture and video I play out the roles of creator and creature in rebellion. The creator makes the first layer and the creature punctures it to find a contradiction a wrong statement that is so compelling that it becomes a separate reality. The Hog Head contains a theatre, the Airport houses a woman’s legs kicking and the telescope is full of shit. One image does not interpret or override the other. They remain in a buzzing tension.

Images

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Project Statement

“The Missing Arm”

…this was not the familiar arm that extends the hand towards the door knob, the spoon or pencil. It was not the tool that feeds the mouth, or measures the distance between here and there. The arm became uncanny; a new symbol. It was and was not me.

The work I present at RAID is meant to show a process of reclaiming mastery over a part of my body that was temporarily knocked out of an idea of self hood. I’ve created a series of sculptures, writings, and drawings of bones and muscles that are also characters from a story I was told while in the waiting room at the County hospital. I am searching for a way to show how the retelling of an experience might function to heal the body. Conversely; how might retelling that story gradually bury new information about selfhood that is internal, perhaps only detectable during that brief window of time when a body repairs itself.

Biography

EDUCATION
2002-2004 MFA Fiber and Material Studies, School of the Art Institute, Chicago, IL
1994-1998 BA in Studio Art,  Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, NY

GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2007 "Positions of Elsewhere" Peer Gallery, New York, NY
"The Gentlemen's Gentlemen" collaborative video and
performance with Noe Kidder, Croxhapox, Ghent, Belgium
"Us and our Katamari" Lisa Boyle Gallery, Chicago, IL
2006 "Newark Between Us", Newark National Building, Newark, NJ
"Twin Reflections", Dam, Stuhltrager gallery, Brooklyn, NY
"Stock Exchange" , Gallery Uno, Chicago, IL
"Bestiary", Poet's House, New York, NY
2005 "Graffiti Stories", Hyunnart Studio, Rome, Italy, and
Gallery 21, Berlin
"Andy Young, Brian Getnick", NOVA exhibit space, Chicago IL
"The image moving The moving image", Contemporary Art Workshop,
Chicago, IL
"Da inhoud van illusie", Illusion house, Den Haag, Holland
2004  "Dark Matter Ritual", Performance at Pac Edge Festival,
Chicago IL

SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2007  RAID projects, Los Angeles, CA
2005 "The Hundred Headed Ass" Lisa Boyle Gallery, Chicago, IL
2001 "Mechanisms for the New Mythology" Centrum Center for the
Arts, Port Townsend, WA
2000 "The apprentices" EOH Gallery Earlville, NY
"Bird and Whale Adolescence" Red Mill Gallery, Johnson, VT