Matthew Brandt at Yossi Milo Gallery

Selling off unwanted furniture and household decoration takes a new twist in one of Matthew Brandt’s latest series, ‘Rooms,’ at Yossi Milo Gallery, for which he acquired chandeliers, then hot-fused photos of the room in which the chandelier hung to the individual pieces of the chandelier.  Literally bearing witness to their past, the lights feature windows (as seen here), furnishings and other signs of life from the past owner.  In this piece, ‘May’s Living Room,’ pictures of the past environment recall a pointillist painting crossed with a geometric abstraction.  (On view in Chelsea through Dec 11th).

Matthew Brandt, from the series Rooms, May’s Living Room, photographic glass chandelier pieces with painted metal armature, 9 x 16 x 16 inches, 2021.

Matthew Brandt at Yossi Milo Gallery

Soon after the scandal over tainted drinking water in Flint, Michigan broke in spring 2016, Matthew Brandt visited the beleaguered General Motors town, creating beautiful images using toxic water. Brandt collected river water and used it to wash over and degrade cyan, magenta and yellow sheets bearing an image of the river’s dam. Recombined in a lightbox, a damaged image represents a devastated landscape. (At Yossi Milo Gallery in Chelsea through Jan 21st.)

Matthew Brandt, From the series Waterfalls, Stepping Stone Falls 8 C3M1Y1, multi-layered Duraclear prints processed with Flint River, Michigan water in LED lightbox frame, 20 x 14 inches, unique, 2016.
Matthew Brandt, From the series Waterfalls, Stepping Stone Falls 8 C3M1Y1, multi-layered Duraclear prints processed with Flint River, Michigan water in LED lightbox frame, 20 x 14 inches, unique, 2016.

Matthew Brandt at Yossi Milo Gallery

LA-based photographer Matthew Brandt uses old technology to make up-to-date photographs in his latest show at Chelsea’s Yossi Milo Gallery. For this image of a pre-historical creature, he coated an aluminum plate with tar from the La Brea Tar Pits, covered it with a negative he shot of the fossil, and exposed it to light to record a fixed image. (Through May 10th).

Matthew Brandt, La Brea B2, heliograph made with tar from the La Brea Tar Pits, Los Angeles, California, on aluminum, unique, 2013.

Matthew Brandt at Yossi Milo Gallery

Matthew Brandt, Bees of Bees 5 (detail), gum bichromate print with honeybees on paper, 2012.
Matthew Brandt, Bees of Bees 5 (detail), gum bichromate print with honeybees on paper, 2012.

Whether he’s burning trees to make charcoal or soaking a photograph of a lake in lake water to get an abstracted effect, Matthew Brandt uses his subject matter to create an image of that subject.  When bee colony collapse led to his discovery of hundreds of dead or dying bees on the California coast, he collected the bees and photographed them in his studio, printing them with an emulsion made of the bees.   The resulting prints are huge and swarming with bees (like the one in this detail), but chilling when a closer look reveals that they are in various states of decomposition. (At Yossi Milo Gallery through August 31, 2012).