Brandon Anschultz:
Stick Around for Joy
June 11 – September 26, 2010
Opening Reception: June 11, 6-8:00 p.m.
12580 Rott Road
St. Louis, Missouri 63127 USA
314-615-5278
Following its run at Laumeier, the exhibition will inaugurate The River Between Us series by travelling to Longue Vue where Anschultz will reconfigure the work to interact with Longue Vue’s unique spaces (November 12, 2010 to February 6, 2011).
The title of the exhibition, Stick Around for Joy, is appropriated from the Sugarcubes’ 1992 album of the same name. “The album and the band were really important to me at the pivotal time coming out of high school, entering college and deciding to become an artist,” said Anschultz. “A punk band from Iceland was about as far as you could get in Judsonia, Arkansas.” Stick Around for Joy reflects the vague optimism the artist sees in his work. “It resonates from the playfulness of material improvisation, exploration and chance that is inherent in the work,” said Anschultz.
Anschultz has a history of shape-shifting painting, sculpture and architecture. In the exhibition, he shows a subtle evasiveness with a group of three paintings related by a process of direct contact—sharing paint as they are physically pressed together during their making. The works are intentionally located in three separate galleries to de-emphasize the creative process—they are instead, emblematic of relatives or lovers that have moved apart. Anschultz is far brasher in his strategy with Approximately 1350 Hours of Painting and 2 Hours of Woodchipping, 2002–2010, a piece in which 17 of the artist’s paintings were shredded in a wood chipper and comingled in the shape of a column, acting at once as a collection of rubble and a monument to the many works now united as one. In the work 17 to 1, 2010, he uses a portion of the gallery to combine previously discreet objects into a new site-specific work. Anschultz found and painted architectural features and walls that directly reference his vernacular as an artist. The area includes a perfectly anchored painting and a smaller “mulch” sculpture jutting from the wall on a plinth, extending the piece and wall color into the room. This inventive adaptation—creating a new work in relation to the site and stronger dialogue between extant works—amply demonstrates Anschultz’s creative strength.
Brandon Anschultz was born in Judsonia, Arkansas and currently lives and works in St. Louis. He received his BFA from Louisiana Tech University and his MFA from Washington University in St. Louis. Anschultz has had recent solo exhibitions at the Center of Creative Arts, White Flag Projects, and Philip Slein Gallery all 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.
Gallery Talk
Laumeier will present a gallery talk for the general public on Wednesday, September 8, at 6:00 p.m. in Laumeier’s Indoor Galleries. Brandon Anschultz and Joe Baker, Director and Chief Curator at Longue Vue House and Gardens in New Orleans, will discuss the work created in response to the two historic homes of Laumeier and Longue Vue and the process involved in creating the partnership exhibition.
Support for the exhibition is provided by St. Louis County Parks, the Missouri Arts Council, the Regional Arts Commission, the Arts and Education Council of St. Louis, the Mark Twain Laumeier Fund, Nancy and Ken Kranzberg, the Kranzberg Exhibition Series Fund, the University of Missouri-St. Louis and Philip Slein Gallery.
