Concerning Laos: Oval Office, May 1961

Matthew Brannon is best known for his letterpress and screen prints of incongruous combinations of images and text. These prints are rendered in a subtle, stripped-down aesthetic, evoking mass production and marketing design. For a 2006 series of blue and black [silkscreen](/gene/silkscreen-1) prints, Brannon paired representations of potted plants with grim subtitles such as *Sick Whore and How It All Ends*, in keeping with his thematic interest in pathology and personal struggle. Brannon’s sculptures exhibit a similar pictorial simplicity, often executed in few colors and with meticulous attention to symmetry and balance. Like a stage set for the performance of a play set on board a ship, the mixed-media installation *Nevertheless* (2009) features a minimalist turquoise and white model of a bedroom, adorned with curtains and decorative bottles carved from balsa wood—a space both beautiful and somehow bereft.

New York, NY, USA