Fort Wayne, American Monologue: A new body of work and installation by Brett Amory
Josef Zimmerman, Curator
Oakland, California-based artist Brett Amory unveils a bold new body of work and an installation at FWMoA. The installation will be built during the month of November with public welcome to watch him work, with a new body of paintings based on the people and places in Fort Wayne unveiled November 5. Amory’s inspiration for this project is Fort Wayne’s past, present, and future, which may also serve as an observation of the nation as a whole. Amory’s installation will have layers of growth and failure with undertones of industry, family, and heritage. The installation will speak through the language of architecture, and Amory will also use the structural anatomy of Fort Wayne to create a 30-foot structure reminiscent of the buildings and sites common to our city.
The month of November:
Watch Brett work during these times each week: Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday: 10am-2pm; Thursday 4-8pm; Saturday 12-4pm. General admission will apply.
November 10, 6pm: Gallery Talk with Brett Amory
Visit with Brett, see the progress of his installation, and learn more about his new work. Free admission, cash bar, snacks.
About Brett Amory
Brett Amory was born in 1975 in Chesapeake, Virginia but moved to San Francisco in 1994. Amory lived in the San Francisco’s famed Tenderloin neighborhood for 15 years, altering his societal outlook and ultimately affecting his decision to become an artist. In 2009 he relocated to Oakland, California and now calls Oakland his home.
Amory is most known for his Waiting series that began in 2001. He is interested in the ordinary and inspired by his photographs of San Francisco’s city architecture and the people he observed – seemingly always in a state of waiting. The Waiting series illustrates how people are distracted by a constant internal dialogue, preoccupation with memories of the past and concerns for the future.
Amory’s work attempts to visually represent the concept of detachment and anticipation, conveying the many ideas associated with individual moments of everyday life, places, and people, while exploring the time in which we live and how we make sense of the information that surrounds us. Amory’s work is concerned with disjointed snapshots that make up our everyday life and how our unconscious mind assembles these abstract, nonlinear events to attempt to fuse together a logical, linear explanation of our surroundings. Amory allows the viewer to tap his or her unconscious mind to create their own meaning of what they are viewing. The viewer relies on their own memories, dreams, thoughts and universal archetypal symbols to create their own interpretation of the work.
From Waiting, Amory would tackle other challenging and big picture topics, exploring the unromantic, un-explored and forgotten side of cities across the United States and Great Britain. This highly acclaimed series has won praise for the artist, and has altered his interests in documentation and story telling. Amory has shown his work around the world, with recent solo exhibitions in Los Angeles, New York City, London and San Francisco.