Blanc Gallery is pleased to present the work of Chicago-based artist Brandon Breaux in his first U.S. solo exhibition, BIG WORDS.
Curated by Anna Cerniglia and Alison Cuddy, this multidisciplinary exhibition is a journey through some of the touchstones – people, places, and artifacts – that have shaped how Breaux has come to see the world and a meditation on the way identity evolves through an ongoing dialogue with public events and personal histories. Featuring a series of paintings, installations, and a digital NFT, Breaux actualizes the labor behind identity formation, in its recirculation through time, as both an abstract process and concrete family experience. The juxtaposition of painterly images with graphic lettering invites a connection—or confrontation—with the way language can be both a passageway or barrier between worlds.
Show statement:
In 2017 I purchased my grandmother’s house, with the intent of preserving family history and connecting with home. It brought me some hard-earned lessons on being a first-time homeowner but it also brought me back to the neighborhood where I grew up. As I stripped paint and renovated parts of the house, I began to sit with memories of my family and some of our everyday experiences that have been so important to building my worldview and sense of identity.
BIG WORDS represents the resulting deep questioning of all aspects of my identity, and a desire to both acknowledge and share this experience, while also constructing the personal language and point of view that shapes how I move through the world.
How do we use language to inform our reality? To survive and create boundaries? How do we find the freedom to thoughtfully speak in our own language without the pressure to edit or code-switch to suit a different context? How do we carry home into the present?