MARQUEE PROJECTS

Puffy Luminous Frequencies

Justin Adian

Michelle Benoit

Daniel Bruttig

Exhibition: 
October 23 - November 28, 2021

MARQUEE PROJECTS is pleased to present Puffy Luminous Frequencies, a group exhibition featuring the work of Justin Adian, Michelle Benoit, and Daniel Bruttig. A reception for the artists will be held Saturday, October 23 from 5-7 PM.

The artists in Puffy Luminous Frequencies glorify color using formalist strategies. They humorously revisit “high” (Constructivism/Minimalism) by way of “low” (craft specialization) to make wall objects that blur the line between sculpture and painting. A shared taste for synthetic and repurposed materials inspires futuristic assemblages produced through unconventional means.

Adian covers shaped wooden stretchers with foam and canvas, bumping out Malevich-like shapes into color-coordinated, upholstered forms. Benoit sandwiches paint between Lucite scraps, extracting Rothko-esque hues into elongated crystals. Using thermoplastic adhesives and/or strung lanyards, Bruttig extends Dekooning’s excavation series and/or the optic effects of Richter’s stripe paintings into a whole-body experience.

Puffy Luminous Frequencies combines untraditional art materials with traditional builders’ skills to squeeze a bit more juice from the mid-twentieth-century canon.

Justin Adian was born in Fort Worth, TX in 1976 and currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. The fine line between painting and sculpture is especially blurred in the work of Adian, who produces abstract wall reliefs in vibrant palettes that oscillate between and borrow from the two artistic languages. Adian has exhibited at galleries including Almine Rech Gallery, Paris, France, Brussels, Belgium and New York, NY; Sean Horton (Presents), Dallas, TX; Half Gallery, New York, NY; Skarstedt, London, UK
 and New York, NY; Rachel Uffner, New York, NY; Lehmann Maupin, New York, NY; Gagosian, London, UK; and Martos Gallery, New York
, NY. Adian’s works have been reviewed and discussed in ArtNews; Hyperallergic; Flaunt; Purple; Artforum; Autre; and The New York Times amongst others. Justin Adian’s work is represented in the collection of the Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, TX.

Michelle Benoit received her BFA from Rhode Island College and an MA and MFA from the University of Iowa. Her work has been exhibited at museums and institutions such as The Makeshift Museum, Los Angeles, CA; Muscarelle Museum of Art, Williamsburg, VA; Bristol Museum of Art, Bristol, RI; Harper Center for the Arts, Clinton, SC; MARQUEE PROJECTS, Bellport, NY; Sarah Doyle Gallery at Brown University; Jamestown Arts Center, Jamestown, RI; New Britain Museum of American Art, New Britain, CT; and more. In addition, her work is in many public and private collections including Memorial Sloan Kettering’s permanent collection, The University of Iowa Museum, and The Swain School of Design.

Daniel Bruttig was born in Milwaukee, WI. He received a BFA from the University of Illinois at Chicago in 2001, and his MFA from the Department of Art Theory and Practice at Northwestern University in 2010. His work has appeared in group and solo exhibitions in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Toronto, and Milwaukee; and at the Renaissance Society of the University of Chicago, Hyde Park Art Center, and Evanston Art Center. He is included in collections in Moscow, Twitter New York, San Diego, Chicago, Madison, Milwaukee, and other locales. In 2009, Bruttig received the Dedalus Foundation nomination; and, in 2010, the Joan Mitchell Foundation Emerging MFA nomination. Bruttig lives and works in Chicago, IL.