BRANDON BALLENGÉE


RIP Passenger Pigeon: After Jack Ruthven, 1973/2023
Hand-colored aquatint
42.25 x 27.75 in., unframed

RIP Zanzibar Leopard: After Rich Buckler & Frank Giacoia, 1973/2023
Bronze Age comic book cover
10.5 x 7.25 in., unframed

RIP Dodo: After S. Edwards, 1808/2023
Hand-colored copperplate engraving
10.75 x 7 in., unframed
Brandon Ballengée
Lives and works in Louisiana, USA
EDUCATION / ACADEMIC AFFILIATIONS
2021-26
Adjunct Faculty of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Tulane University, New Orleans, LA
2015-18
Postdoctoral Research, Ichthyology Department, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA
2014
Ph. D., Transdisciplinary Art and Science, University of Plymouth, England / Hochschule Für Gestaltung Zürich, Switzerland
2008
M.Phil., University of Plymouth, England / Hochschule Für Gestaltung Zürich, Switzerland
SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2023
Jennifer Baahng Gallery, New York, NY (forthcoming)
2023
Redbud Arts Center, Houston, TX, Sculpting Endless Forms
2022
CAIRN Centre d’art, Digne-les-Bains, France, Aimer, c’est agir
2021
Acadiana Center for the Arts, Lafayette, LA, The Age of Loneliness
2019
Ann Connelly Fine Art, Baton Rouge, LA, Brandon Ballengée: Ghosts of the Gulf
Louisiana Art and Science Museum, Baton Rouge, LA, Brandon Ballengée: Frameworks of Absence
Museum of Fine Art, Florida State University, Tallahassee, Florida, La Sang Noir (catalog)
2018
Expo Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, Brandon Ballengée: Frameworks of Absence
Bannister Gallery, Rhode Island College, Providence, Rhode Island, Ti-tânes and Other Myths of the Anthropocene
2017
Rowan University Art Gallery, Glassboro, NJ, Brandon Ballengée: Sea of Vulnerability
2016
University of Wyoming Art Museum, Laramie, WY, Waste Land: A Survey of Works by Brandon Ballengée (catalog)
2015
Nowhere Gallery, Milan, Italy, A Habit of Deciding Influence (catalog)
Bemis Center for Contemporary Art, Omaha, NE, Collapse
Garrison Art Center, Garrison, NY, Breathing Space for the Hudson
Ronald Feldman Fine Arts at The Armory Show, New York, NY, Frameworks of Absence
2014
National Academy of the Sciences, Washington D.C., Collapse
Beacon Institute for Rivers and Estuaries, Beacon, NY, Ghosts of the Gulf
Acadiana Center for the Arts, Lafayette, LA, Eco-Displacement: Ghosts of the Gulf
Museum Het Domein, Sittard, Netherlands, Seasons in Hell
Alden B Dow Museum of Art and Science, Midland Center for the Arts, Midland, MI, Nature’s Fading Chorus
2013
DOCVA, Viafarini, Milan, Italy, Committed
Chateau du Domaine de Chamarande, Chamarande, France, Augures d’Innoncence (catalog)
The Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education, Philadelphia, PA, The Cryptic Ones
2012
Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, New York, NY, Collapse: The Cry of Silent Forms
2011
Prospect New Orleans 2 Satellite, Longue Vue House and Gardens, New Orleans, LA, Audubon’s Absence
2010
Parco Arte Vivente, Centro d’Arte Contemporanea, Turin, Italy, Praeter Naturam
The Royal Institution of Great Britain, London, England, The Case of the Deviant Toad
SELECTED PUBLIC COLLECTIONS
21C Museum Hotels, Louisville, KY, USA
American Museum of Natural History, New York City, NY, USA
Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, Maryland, USA
Columbus Public Library, Columbus, OH, USA
Cross Hill Academy, Yonkers, NY, USA
Gallery Oldham, Manchester, England
Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, USA
Geumgang Nature Art Museum, Gwangju, South Korea
Hartwick College, Oneonta, NY, USA
Hudson River Museum, Yonkers, NY, USA
Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA
Karl Stirner Arts Trail, Easton, PA
Kunstverein Ingolstadt, Ingolstadt, Germany
Lafayette College, Easton, PA, USA
Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature, Paris, France
Museum Het Domein, Sittard, Netherlands
Museum of Vertebrate Zoology at U.C. Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA
Natural History Museum, London, England
NASA, Washington, DC, USA
National Academy of Sciences, Washington, DC, USA
National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, Research Triangle Park, NC, USA
New York State Museum, Albany, NY, USA
Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art, Logan, UT, USA
Peabody Museum, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA
Progressive, Mayfield, OH, USA
School of Art and Design New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University, Alfred, NY, USA
Shrewsbury Museum, Shropshire, England
State University of West Georgia, Carrolton, GA, USA
TICKON Tranekaer International Center for Art and Nature, Langeland, Denmark
Teaneck Creek Conservancy, Teaneck, NY, USA
University of Wyoming Art Museum, Laramie, WY, USA
Verbeke Foundation, Westakker, Belgium
Wanås Konst, Knislinge, Sweden
Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, CT, USA
Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Wakefield, England
Related
Categories: artists
Tags: Brandon Bellengee
PICASSO, WELCOME TO AMERICA











Madison Ave New York
Picasso, Welcome to America
June 15 – September 27, 2023
R.C. Baker
Brandon Ballengée
Romare Bearden
Deborah Buck
Shijia Chen
Billy Copley
Eileen Foti
Björn Meyer-Ebrecht
Jaye Moon
Pablo Picasso
André Raffray
Janet Taylor Pickett
Zhang Hongtu
Every artist since the early 20th century has been influenced by Pablo Picasso. The protean painter/ sculptor/ printmaker/ ceramicist helped define what “modern” art once was – and is still becoming. In 1939, MoMA’s staff was gathering 300 works by the world’s “most famous living artist” (according to the museum’s press release) for Picasso: Forty Years of His Art. A centerpiece of the exhibit was Guernica, his grisaille mural decrying the destruction of the small Basque town by Nazi bombers, in 1937.
Along with Michelangelo and Rembrandt, the name Picasso (1881-1973) has become a synonym – a cliché, even – for “artist.” But none of the artists in Picasso, Welcome to America see the Spanish-born titan as an old hat. Instead, these ten Americans find in the European trailblazer constant inspiration and ongoing challenge. Zhang Hongtu imagines Chairman Mao exposed by glaring illumination similar to the all-seeing lantern in Guernica. Jaye Moon also reimagines Picasso’s anti-war masterpiece, in When Bob Dylan Meets Picasso, Guernica – using Lego bricks in Braille rather than paint.
The bodies and masks in another Picasso touchstone, Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (1907), come under scrutiny from Eileen Foti and André Raffray through substitution and homage. Billy Copley finds masks in unlikely surroundings, while Janet Taylor Pickett moves effigies aside to place her powerful female figure at center stage. Deborah Buck turns Picasso’s infamously harsh male gaze around, painting surreal figures that might be asking, “Who’s crying now?” In Weary of Treading the Earth, from 1945, Romare Bearden, working in watercolor and ink rather than his later signature collage, energizes cubist space with a circus-like palette. R.C. Baker riffs beyond Picasso’s Blue and Rose periods through primary-colored aluminum printing plates. Björn Meyer-Ebrecht’s dynamic wood and enamel sculpture strips the figure to cubist angles and voids, while Brandon Ballengée searches for animals that, like Picasso’s minotaurs, are no longer with us. Original works by Pablo Picasso will also be on view, commemorating the 50th anniversary of his death.
All of the artists in this exhibition have been influenced by Picasso’s experiments with form and perspective – his breaking of traditional and academic rules. Some of the work here also comments on his darker side, while other pieces engage with the social and political aspects of Picasso’s art. Ultimately, these ten contemporary artists in Picasso, Welcome to America appreciate the formal and aesthetic complexity of a constant innovator. This great artist was effectively barred from ever visiting the United States because he was a member of the French Communist Party. But the joke was on the Feds – Picasso has been in America all along.
VIDEOS
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The Brooklyn Rail reviews RC Baker’s solo exhibition, “…and Nixon’s coming” the draft

Jaye Moon is included in the New York Foundation for the Arts exhibition
Categories: exhibitions
Tags: André Raffray Billy Copley Björn Meyer-Ebrecht Brandon Bellengee Deborah Buck Eileen Foti Janet Taylor Pickett Jaye Moon Kathy Grove Pablo Picasso RC Baker Romare Bearden Zhang Hongtu