Abstract faces, harsh contrast, bold marks. Brandon Lipscombe-Holt

Result #1

Abstract faces, harsh contrast, bold marks. Brandon Lipscombe-Holt izes and manipulates process as a way to make the viewers relation to the work a more intimate one, a challenging relationship between viewer and work. The works on paper, mounted on my studio wall, were large and impressionistic, with heads and body silhouetted against the light, sometimes face-on. In the installation, they were hung on the wall or tied up in a row like SoHo, with and without trinkets—a decidedly binary arrangement. Some were painted over with layering paste—a kind of material stain, a mottled surface—or a plaster-like skin, and a few were sculpted to the extent that there was no doubt that they had been made by hand. Some were just cartoons, some paintings, some stickers, some watercolors, and a few—the rest?—were sets of sculptural concrete figures.Lipscombe-Holt is a genre painter, but one who always takes a position and a color, a physical object, and a kind of painting through to the end, making it present. She draws the figure and object together, drawing the action of the stamp—an imitation, like a drawing or a stamp, which is a sign of the action of painting and makes the image more real. And she uses the cartoon as a metaphor for being: an amalgam of Greek and English, it recalls a photograph, as well as, in the shows title, the title of one of her earlier drawings. Like a stamp, the stamp is both a stamp of continuity and a fragment, a fragment that could be translated into any one of a multitude of significances. The form that she adopted to represent the action of the stamp in the center of the work, for instance, is a touristic gesture, an antiart gesture, a labor gesture—but the artist is not giving up the image that was already there; she makes us believe that shes actually doing something that is different.

Result #2

Abstract faces, harsh contrast, bold marks. Brandon Lipscombe-Holt iced-cream is a relative little thing. His works are upstaged by the alt-modernist museum-piece he makes as a kid. It may be a little too romantic to call him an artist, but Lipscombe-Holt is at least as much an operator as he is an artist. His latest exhibition of sculptural plaques, along with some drawings, pieces of wood cutouts, and workbooks, makes a stronger case for his reinvigorated body of work as a whole. The plaques range in size from about a half-foot square to about twelve feet across. They can be arranged in many ways, and there are plans for interiors, fields, terrariums, aquariums, and gardens (to be determined), although they are not titled. They are all pieces, and in his painting—on paper, on canvas, on aluminum, and on wood—Lipscombe-Holt returns to the human condition. The plaques are composed of two or three elements, but are not so much collages as they are directly composed. Lipscombe-Holt builds up layers of claylike clay and plaster, crayon, acrylic, and gouache over plastic-based gesso. He crushes the plaster, builds up a double layer of clay, and then builds up a matrix of clay over the plaster, then builds up a final layer of plaster over the clay, but leaves it in the plaster. This process of collage and extraction of layers creates a work that is almost monochromatic. The plaques are inscrutable yet not. Lipscombe-Holt has an unusual ability to create meaningful combinations of materials. The plaster on which the plaster is molded is a close approximation of the plaster on which the plaster is built, and thus the difference between the two is augmented.The plaster, which functions as both a material and an image, is as variable as the plaques themselves.

Result #3

ike a lispy-sullen lispy-sullen kind of dude-to-fete-on-purpose, for whom rock music is a call to genuflect, a nod to the prosaic and ritualized that characterizes punk. The concomitant ill-fitting of desire to the hierarchy of musical tastes by a cossack band is a conceit that serves Lipsnachs rapprochement with the leftovers of the music world. Nevertheless, it is the peace of mountains and city streets that he imposes on the musical realm. It is the redemptive promise of dancing in a noncommercial fashion.

Result #4

Abstract faces, harsh contrast, bold marks. Brandon Lipscombe-Holt  made a great jump this season. The eighteen paintings and one small sculpture exhibited at Gladstone seem a delight to behold. We know how large Lipscombe-Holt has been, and his remains are becoming increasingly larger, more numerous, and more convincing, but we also know the paintings will be steadily and carefully composed. At the same time, he is no longer making paintings and sculpture. In the course of making new things and working out what to do next, his work will grow larger and more systematic. Yet, it is still a surprise to see Lipscombe-Holt back in this one work after so much years of experimentation. The most striking painting is the slow, sensuous closeup of the viscous, open head and neck. The subject, a seated woman, has been achieved through a combination of trompe loeil and rapid brushstrokes. This naked body, covered with a brown satin gown, is straining and fluttering to get the most of her space and attention. The figure appears to be prepared to take any attack. The pose is slightly unnerving, but Lipscombe-Holt has done it all over again. Other paintings include a nude man with legs apart in front of a second woman, who has turned away to rest on the floor; a seated figure sitting on a chair; and a reclining nude woman who is clearly enjoying the viewers attention. By using the four and a half brushstrokes to portray each complete figure, Lipscombe-Holt makes his entire imagery appear as a record of the moment when a double vision begins, a moment of realization where the ideal is created and the reality is realized.Lipscombe-Holt  is taking a very risk-free, even reckless approach to painting. He has made a painting which is both sexual and enigmatic, but also very freeing.

Result #5

s wooden sculptures and installation were less about sculpture as such and more about the representation of a conceptual/gestural notion of sculpture. Lipscombe-Holt has made a career of remaking woodblock prints, glass-fronted furniture, and even the bathroom of the twentieth century, but he can also be credited with being the first (and, so far, the only) American artist to photograph, in his studio, the other half of the human body. Since he first exhibited this information in 1978, he has been able to demonstrate a technique of photographic capturing, in which the naked eye is depicted as a transparent, digital version of the other body—the artist, or, more precisely, himself.He first captured the artist as he appeared—uncared, disoriented, and lost in himself. In a series of collages, based on a photograph of the artist, printed on paper and hung on a wall, the artist assumed various positions (ranging from hand to hand, from couch to couch, from private to public, from private to public). As his life transformed, Lipscombe-Holt became increasingly lost in his self-initiated activity, as he tried to find a way to represent both himself and his body. At the same time, he was losing control over his actions; his body became as his body became disorienting. He lost his identity as an artist, but retained his identities as a human being—the artists body, a body made of wood.