Marc Breslin: "Casual curses are the most effective"

Opening: Saturday, April 30, 6-8pm

Exhibition Dates: April 21 – June 5, 2011

Scaramouche is pleased to present a solo exhibition of paintings and video projections by Marc Breslin. "Casual curses are the most effective" takes its title from a William S. Burroughs quotation about black magic, and suggests that perception's reorganization is in the informal and everyday; in this state of awareness, we're asked to suspend belief.

The exhibition's canvases adopt abstraction to demonstrate how bound the body is to place and objects at hand. Layered paintings such as Untitled (whites under wet), consisting of oil, concrete paint, and charcoal, can be perceived as relics of an ongoing activity of making, obfuscating, and dragging to the surface again. Evoking the work of On Kawara and Roman Olpaka, Breslin's canvases render time material and sensate. The openings to depth in these seemingly monochrome works create an illusory space, as the daily, even the rote, become strange again.

Similarly embracing abstraction as a backdoor to the everyday, Breslin's video projections depict what seem to be static shafts of white bounded by fields of darkness. With Untitled (Lighting 1), first a halo, then a muted aura, is emitted from the streaks, shattering the stillness. Comprising footage of dying fluorescent light tubes, the projections depict the tubes breaking down and convulsing with subtle tonal spasms. Geometry and material are rendered uncanny and moving, as what was once abstract almost assumes a body.

Marc Breslin (b. 1983) received a BA in art history and literature from Boston College in 2005. Recent exhibitions include a 2009 solo exhibition, "Newer Old Work," at Galerie Debaume, New York, and the 2010 group exhibition "Gerhard Richter and the Disappearance of the Image in Contemporary Art," at the Centro di Cultura Contemporanea Strozzina (CCCS), Florence, Italy. Breslin lives and works in New York.