Brandon Anschultz and Nicole Mauser
July 16 - August 14, 2010 (opening reception Friday, July 16th, 5-8pm)
Curated by Natalie Popovic Schuh

Carrie Secrist Gallery is pleased to announce two upcoming exhibitions featuring the work of Brandon Anschultz and Nicole Mauser. These will be the first solo exhibitions in Chicago for both artists.

Dismantling into discrete parts the fundamental elements of formal painting -- chromatics, substrate, composition, dimensionality and presentation -- Brandon Anschultz pays homage to the medium's essential capacity for beauty while challenging every traditional approach to producing it. Paint is directly applied to canvas, then partially removed and pressed against another canvas, creating a wholly new impression. That imprint, in turn, creates another -- removing that particular product even further from its expressive source: the artist's hand. An all-over hue is built by layering multiple coats of flat paint; that meticulous and complex color is disrupted by the chance marks of imprinted paint, the whole canvas then reversed to reveal the otherwise hidden, incidental residues that bled through the raw fabric surface. Canvas is removed entirely from its frame to form sculptural pieces that have both a painterly presence and a slightly disorienting three-dimensionality. By the continual excavation of the medium's potential for novelty and the artist's ability to subvert his own expertise, the work ultimately discloses the simplest of motives: that of immediate, visceral pleasure. In Anshcultz's work, the lushness and tactility of paint continually walk the line of formalist restraint and something rawly and agitatedly subversive. (By Jessica Baren)

Nicole Mauser's approach to abstraction stems from an aim to create tension between the materiality of the painted surface and the constructed image it contains. As she builds paintings through the addition and subtraction of marks, Mauser is careful to allow the process of it's making to remain. While constructing these surface images she maintains an awareness of each painting's objectness, leading to a sense of being able to physically navigate the layers of the finished picture plane. By combining this use of abstraction with an interest in narrative, Mauser seeks to break down distinctions between the organic and synthetic, system and intuition, space and light, abjection and desire. Trespassing through these fields, the painting process becomes a search for form and meaning, both for the artist as its maker and for the viewer.

Brandon Anschultz was born in Judsonia, Arkansas and currently lives and works in St. Louis, Missouri. He received his BFA from Louisiana Tech University and his MFA from Washington University in St. Louis. Stick Around for Joy, a solo exhibition at Laumeier Sculpture Park in St. Louis is currently on view. Anschultz has had recent solo exhibitions at the Center of Creative Arts, White Flag Projects, and Philip Slein Gallery in St. Louis; @Space Contemporary in Santa Ana, California; and Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, New York. Recent group exhibitions include Front Desk Apparatus in New York; Monte Vista Projects in Los Angeles; the Brooks Museum of Art, Memphis; the Daum Museum of Contemporary Art, Sedalia, Missouri; The Dolphin Gallery and Urban Culture Project's La Esquina, in Kansas City and Sun Yat Sen Memorial Hall, Taipei, Taiwan.

Nicole Mauser is a recent graduate of the MFA program at the University of Chicago and has a BFA from the Ringling School of Art in Design, Sarasota, Florida. Mauser has had recent exhibitions at DOVA Temporary, Chicago, IL and at the Arts Incubator of Kansas City. Mauser is the recipient of the Student Fine Art Fund University of Chicago, Grant for Berlin painting research, has studied at Centre pour l'Arte et la Culture, IAU Aix-en-Provence France and was included in the New American Paintings, issue #76, Midwest Region Competition, Curated by Raphaela Platow. Mauser has participated in the Urban Culture Project Residency in KCMO was recently chosen as a Post-MFA Teaching Fellow at The University of Chicago, which begins in 2011.

A reception will be held at the gallery on Friday, 16 July, from 5-8pm. For further information please call the gallery at 312.491.0917, or email at info@secristgallery.com.

Brandon Anschultz, Blue, White and Camo (Reverse), 2010, oil on raw canvas, 52 x 42 inches

Nicole Mauser, Herringbone Homunculus, 2010, oil on canvas, 16 x 20 x 1 inch