Reviews

Aine Scannell included my smoke drawings in “alternative drawing methods” on Pinterest:

 

empty room: an art exhibition

A minimalist solo show featuring a new video (Empty Chair, 2016) and the first four smoke drawings from new series: The Digital Age (2015) by Kelley Brannon

Saturday, January 30, 2016 at Rabbithole: 33 Washington Street, Brooklyn, NY

 

“The first ten minutes at this show were better than most openings I’ve been to”
-M. Fisher, Writer at Japanco NY

 

“empty room:  an art exhibition

I hadn’t been to Dumbo in years, but the prospect of meeting friends for dinner before attending a gallery show seemed engaging.

Waiting for the food to be prepared, the other guests and myself uttered needing to catch up on culture and in particular on art, by attending galleries.  I was glad that tired as we were after imbibing a bit too much, when someone suggested we stay, one woman remonstrated by putting on her coat and we all headed to the show.

Finding at least two Rabbit Holes in Brooklyn, I was happy to see a sign outside a building under the bridge with an arrow pointing down.  Descending the long row of steps and entering a white room with a coat rack and dry eucalyptus leaves, we were immediately given drinks, PBRs, tequila or seltzer before everyone went on their own ingesting the art.

What was nice was Kelley running over to talk to each of us, expressing delight at seeing more people, and even strangers when expecting a smaller crowd. She continued to explain the four pieces that were up from her third smoke drawing series, The Digital Age, though there were other pieces from previous series’ she withheld from showing to not cram the space. She added that Empty Room: An Art Exhibition, partly curated by Kala Jerzy and whose apartment and minimalist lifestyle inspired the show, was comprised of these four new works, the first from her third series, and the time-lapse video, Empty Chair, shot in Kala’s apartment last December.

Nodding that it was perfect, while I looked around to receive all four pieces at once, she added that this smoke drawing series was about the process of technology, the speed of information, breadth of its impact, and what it leaves you with.

Her description seemed to fit, the part geometric smudge-like amoebic shapes some in phosphorescent green seeming like polluted fog. Not large sized, the forms resembled shapes of cities or boroughs on a nocturnal pollution grid with connecting lines.

Further down, the video installation Kelley led me to blended with the paintings. Viewing the sun moving past an armchair while a jazz song played (one she largely improvised in a cappella), provided just that serene moment in nature which enables one to absorb more technology after it.

Returning to my friends, one of whom was saying that art should be much more: more material, structure and width, I suggested the opposite, adding that many artists had painted hundreds of pieces a day, some of just dots. Then I couldn’t help overhearing a woman saying all of life is bond-making or bond-breaking.

When my friends gestured to leave I hesitated leaving with Kelley’s humble tell-all attitude.  Even in the end she informed us the space cost 100 dollars and the building was in between being sold and we could have our own shows up until August, while offering to help us produce, sing, act.

Even climbing the steps was made further difficult as someone making his way in was preparing to play the flute.  But then everyone suggested walking under the bridge.  Passing the harbor, the glass-enclosed Merry-Go-Round, catching up with theater goers exiting St. Anne’s Warehouse’s, I wondered about whether the words from the play people had ingested, directed their thoughts in a way art hadn’t for us. And then it occurred to me that for some time we had been in a place sans articles and photos streaming from all directions.”

-Maria Micheles, Cultural Reviewer, New York