Braxon Garneau : Metamorphosis Ball
Installation View Caption Installation view, Metamorphosis Ball, 2024, Efraín López, NY Courtesy the Artist and Efraín López Photo by Inna Svyatsky
New York, NY- Efraín López is pleased to announce Metamorphosis Ball, an exhibition of new works by visual artist, Braxton Garneau. The exhibition will be on view from September 3 through October 12, 2024. For his first solo exhibition at the gallery, Garneau will present a new series of paintings, continuing his exploration of materiality and costuming. For this body of work, Garneau has employed the use of arched canvases to create portals that collapse cultural and historical elements into complex portraits of armor and adornment. Garneau ’s interest in materiality is specifically drawn out in the lace details of these works, made from hand processed shells piped into imagined lace patterns. Integrating three-dimensional costuming elements with gestural asphalt forms, Garneau is interested in both self-adornment and thinking about masquerade as a disruptive tool for social change. An opening reception took place on Tuesday, September 3, 2024, from 6 to 8pm. Metamorphosis Ball is accompanied by an essay authored by Hilary Davidson, a dress, textiles and fashion historian and curator, and chair of the MA Fashion and Textile Studies at the School of Graduate Studies at FIT.
Installation View Caption Installation view, Metamorphosis Ball, 2024, Efraín López, NY Courtesy the Artist and Efraín López Photo by Inna Svyatsky
Braxton Garneau is a visual artist based in amiskwaciwâskahikan (Edmonton, Canada). He holds a BFA from the University of Alberta and has had solo exhibitions at the Art Gallery of Alberta, Edmonton (2024), GAVLAK, Los Angeles (2023) and Stride Gallery, Calgary (2021). His work was featured in the retrospective exhibition Black Every Day at the Art Gallery of Alberta (2021), It's About Time: Dancing Black in Canada 1900 - 1970 and Now at Mitchell Art Gallery, Edmonton (2020), curated by Seika Boye, and New Direction, curated by AJ Girard and Artx at Château Cîroc, Miami, Florida (2021). In 2024, his work Pitch Lake (Pietà) was acquired by the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego through the Northern Trust Purchase Prize at EXPO Chicago, and he was awarded the Lieutenant Governor of Alberta Emerging Artist Award. He has been accepted into the International Studio & Curatorial Program (ISCP), Brooklyn, NY for 2025.
Braxton Garneau Masquerade V, 2024 Asphalt and acrylic on canvas with jute and crushed shell 15 x 10 inches (BG0052) Courtesy the Artist and Efraín López Photo by Inna Svyatsky
With a focus on painting, sculpture, printmaking and installation, Garneau’s practice is rooted in materiality, costuming and transformation. Working in-between cultures, he combines visual influences from classical and contemporary forms with material investigations to consider cultural, social and historical implications. Garneau is interested in what he refers to as “ material honesty, ” or the idea that the use of living matter can imbue work with their essence and power. Exploring and exploiting the physical qualities of materials, Garneau works with harvested and hand-processed mediums including asphalt, raffia, cotton, linen, sugarcane pulp, bones and shells. Garneau ’ s work investigates transformation through both natural cycles and the inherent human tendency for adornment, costuming and masquerade. Connecting materials, customs and clothing, he explores the ability of the natural world, and of the people in it, to adapt and transmute to whatever circumstances they may find themselves in.
About Efraín López
Efraín López is a Puerto Rican-American art dealer and exhibition maker based in New York City. Between 2012 and 2018, López founded and directed his eponymous gallery in Chicago, where he presented an ambitious and rigorous exhibition program, often giving artists their first solo presentation in the United States. His long-standing commitment to the career development of emerging artists has led to placements in major museum collections worldwide. In June of 2023 López opened Efraín López, a contemporary art gallery in New York' s T ribeca neighborhood. The program is conceptual, multidisciplinary, and globally minded, engaging both emerging and established artists.
For information about Braxton’s artwork please visit his site. Braxton’s interview with the magazine can be found here. For information about this exhibition and others, please visit Efraín López’s website. You can also follow the gallery on Instagram.
