Kevin Brisco Jr: Footsteps in the Dark
NEW YORK, NY | Opening October 13th, albertz benda is pleased to present Footsteps in the Dark, Kevin Brisco, Jr.’s first solo exhibition in New York. Titled after the Isley Brothers song about trust lost and the struggle to refind it, this exhibition includes paintings of various scales that capture moments revisited or observed.
The oil on canvas works in this exhibition reveal physical and psychological transitional states and are typical of Brisco’s favored genres, including portraits of friends, still life, or street scenes: a vase of flowers with a passport beside it is placed near a window; a man in suit and tie is rendered in a deep blue grisaille suggesting the twilight hour; a vespa on an empty urban corner seems to glow under streetlights; a drink on a napkin is lit by a small tea candle; a woman is flanked by her children in a cozy domestic space.
Low light is liminal light, and it shifts with time. The sun will rise, the club will close, and the delicate contours of a memory image shall disappear in a camera’s flash. Brisco’s opacity encourages viewers to pause. As any person who has traveled away from a light-polluted city might attest, stars are most clear when you embrace the depth of night.
Brisco’s interest in capturing “that moment when the sun goes down before the lights are turned on” is evident throughout, lending a sensual aura to each canvas. The slow, deliberate process of this young painter recalls the obsession with light and tone in Old Masters from Caravaggio to Georges de La Tour, revealing a sophistication seldom seen in emerging artists.
Accompanying these isolated scenes is a text written by Los Angeles based critic, Allison Noelle Conner.
ABOUT KEVIN BRISCO JR.
Kevin Brisco Jr. [b.1990, Memphis, TN] works across the media of painting, sculpture, installation, and performance. Brisco earned his B.A. from Wesleyan University in 2013 and his M.F.A. from Yale University in 2020. He has exhibited across the U.S. at: Tone Memphis, TN; Good Children Gallery, New Orleans, LA; albertz benda, New York, NY; Contemporary Art Center, New Orleans, LA; Perrotin, New York, NY; Rumpelstiltskin Gallery, Brooklyn, NY; Studio 525, New York, NY; Antenna Gallery, New Orleans, LA; Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery, Middletown, CT; amongst others. He is the recipient of numerous grants and was recently awarded artist-in-residence fellowships at the Fine Art Works Center in Provincetown, MA, and the Vermont Studio Center in Johnson, VT. Brisco lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.
