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| Brenna Youngblood, Flourless Bread Slice #1 and #2. Photograph by Joshua White via camstl.org. All rights reserved. |
Loss
Prevention
May 9 – June 22, 2014
3750
Washington Boulevard
Saint
Louis, MO
From
camstl.org:
The first
Midwestern solo museum exhibition of Los Angeles-based artist Brenna
Youngblood, Loss Prevention features
a selection of new and earlier multimedia works. Often combining paper and
acrylic collage with images of everyday objects, Youngblood juxtaposes the
figure with the abstract, raising questions of what is familiar versus what is
unknown.
Although
Youngblood’s practice of collage and mixed materials calls to mind such artists
as Robert Rauschenberg and Mark Bradford, her work contains more muted layers
of abstraction, with ambiguous and heavily-worked surfaces allowing glimpses of
recognizable objects. Light switches, bulbs, and exit signs appear from a haze
of layered surfaces. In Single and
Successful?, for example, a photograph of a light bulb is placed over an
ethereal, atmospheric surface. Other works reference the figure in the form of
their canvas. The shaped canvases of Flourless
Bread Slice #1 and #2 look like
the famous silhouette of the Wonder Bread bag, and are collaged and painted to
become delicate, fanciful picture planes. Other works function as mock tromp
l’oeil paintings, recognizable at first glance and then dissolving into
abstraction upon further examination.
The
isolation of the objects in Youngblood’s canvases—as well as her choice of
subjects that underscore a lower socio-economic status (the bare light bulb,
unsophisticated bread)—raises subtle and compelling questions about the social
and class dynamics surrounding the items. Challenging our understanding of
objects we use every day, Youngblood creates work that is both beautiful and
cleverly engaged in socio-political critique.
Brenna Youngblood: Loss Prevention is organized for the
Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis by Lisa Melandri, Executive Director.
Brenna
Youngblood (b. 1979, Riverside, California) lives and works in Los Angeles.
Most recently, she was included in the group shows Rites of Spring at the
Contemporary Arts Museum Houston; Fore at the Studio Museum in Harlem; and Made
in L.A. 2012, organized by the Hammer Museum and LAXART, Los Angeles. Past solo
exhibitions include Honor Fraser Gallery, Los Angeles; Nathalie Obadia,
Brussels; Tilton Gallery, New York; Susanne Vielmetter, Berlin; and the Hammer
Museum, Los Angeles. Youngblood earned a BFA from California State University,
Long Beach, and an MFA from UCLA. Youngblood is
represented by Honor Fraser Gallery, Los Angeles.
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