BRANDON BALLENGÉE

August 7, 2023

Frames of Absence, installation view, University of Wyoming Art Museum, 2016

Brandon Ballengée RIP Quagga: After Dr. V. Kirn I. Berg, 1844/2023 Hand-colored copperplate engraving 9.25 x 11.5 in., unframed — Brandon Ballengée
*RIP Quagga: After Dr. V. Kirn I. Berg*, 1844/2023
Hand-colored copperplate engraving
9.25 x 11.5 in., unframed

Brandon Ballengée MIA Highfin Bienny, 2020 Mixed media with Deepwater Horizon source crude oil; Taylor/MC20 source crude; contaminated marshland sediment with oil; anaerobic bacteria and iron oxide; and COREXIT 9500A (dispersant) on Arches hot press watercolor paper — Brandon Ballengée
*MIA Highfin Bienny*, 2020
Mixed media with Deepwater Horizon source crude oil; Taylor/MC20 source crude; contaminated marshland sediment with oil; anaerobic bacteria and iron oxide; and COREXIT 9500A (dispersant) on Arches hot press watercolor paper

Madison Ave New York

Brandon Ballengée

L’Art de la Solitude (The Art of Loneliness)

November 7 – December 30, 2023

We are pleased to announce Art of Loneliness, our debut exhibition by Brandon Ballengée, now represented by the gallery. On view from October 7 to November 30. This exhibition will feature two complementary bodies of his work about species loss. As an artist, biologist, and environmental advocate, Brandon Ballengée responds to the extinction crisis through diverse mediums and actions. His ongoing Frameworks of Absence react to the loss of animal species over recent centuries. For the newer body of work, Crude Oil Paintings, he uses spilled oil from the Deepwater Horizon and Taylor oil spills to portray missing Gulf of Mexico fish species. Selected bodies of work will be exhibited for this exhibition.

BRANDON BALLENGÉE

L’Art de la Solitude (The Art of Loneliness)

Nov 7 - Dec 30, 2023

BRANDON BALLENGÉE

PICASSO, WELCOME TO AMERICA

June 15 – Sept 27, 2023

Categories: exhibitions

Tags: Brandon Bellengee

BRANDON BALLENGÉE

June 25, 2023

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

BRANDON BALLENGÉE

L’Art de la Solitude (The Art of Loneliness)

Nov 7 - Dec 30, 2023

BRANDON BALLENGÉE

PICASSO, WELCOME TO AMERICA

June 15 – Sept 27, 2023

Categories: artists

Tags: Brandon Bellengee

PICASSO, WELCOME TO AMERICA

June 4, 2023

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.