Matthew Brannon

To Say the Very Least

To Say the Very Least is the first comprehensive publication on the print works and installations by Matthew Brannon. Everything takes place on the surface, or just under it in Brannon's work, just as everything there is public or takes place in public. 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 imprint of letterpress 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?"

Essay by
Philip Monk, More Than You Know

agYU Art Gallery of York University
D.A.P Distributed Art Publishers

Back to Publications



Phone: 212 680 9467
Facsimile: 212 680 9473
E-mail:

The gallery is located in Chelsea between 10th and 11th Avenues, and is open Tuesday through Saturday from 10:00 a.m. through 6:00 p.m. and by appointment.