Author Description

"To Say the Very Least is the first comprehensive publication on the print works and installations by Matthew Brannon. Everything takes place on the surface, or just under it in Brannon's work, just as everything there is public or takes place in public. The prints exploit their generic relation to advertising and posters, but the benign appearance of the illustrations, reminiscent of 1950s cookbooks and cocktail manuals, is undercut by the fine imprint of letterpress texts, which teeter towards inappropriate confessions and unpardonable acts. These texts, with their hint of literary genres tinged by noir, are little melodramatic scenarios of success and failure, careerism and alcoholism, substance abuse and sexual misadventure. Each set of prints stages Brannon's principal question, "Why are people their own worst enemies?""--Jacket.