In The Box: Brian Bress

His work in The Box, Man With Cigarette, began with a pen-and-ink drawing Bress found in a thrift store. It depicted a man wearing a fedora and a jacket with wide lapels. The unknown artist used an array of techniques—from hatch marks and ragged shading to pointillistic dots and checkerboard patterns—and Bress said it seemed as if “the drawing was an artist’s love letter to drawing.”

For this four-part video wall, Bress meticulously sculpted the hand-drawn man as a larger-than-life-sized costume. In a symphony of slow, coordinated movements, Bress’ creation heightens a sense of the uncanny, and draws in the viewer while challenging basic assumptions of space and time. It’s a single image with breaks between the monitors, but thanks to the clever choreography, the breaks themselves became part of the overall concept. What should be an illustration of the limits of tecnhology, the edge of the screen, becomes a structural strength of the work that offers surprises along the way.

This is the first time Bress has created a larger-than-life, full-figure portrait, and as an extra tip in the appreciation of this piece, when it comes to Man With Cigarette, pay attention to the cigarette and the length of the ash as a measure of time.

These works will be on view from Sept. 15, 2016, through May 7, 2017.

For more on the work of this innovative young artist, see www.brianbress.com.