Defender Notes:

Queens, NY-based artist Brandon Friend has launched his most ambitious series yet with ‘Defender’. The series represents a logical advancement of the tactile technique of “imprinting”, which Mr. Friend has pioneered for creating mixed media collage, and a big step forwards for his conceptual exploration of our cultural values and personal responsibilities, as expressed through the modern media-saturated dialogue.

Symbol of the Defender
The ‘Defender’ series explores our modern aggressions in the name of peace, prosperity and national security, as they’re inevitably defined and channeled through the institutions of mass media. Each piece in the series is unified by the presentation of a simple iconic image, a silhouette or a shadow, of authority. These shadow figures are armed for the duality of combat, to both attack and defend, yet interestingly enough, they’re armed not with the modern tools of combat but rather the antiquated pairing of shield and baton. As such, the authoritarian images in the Defender series evoke not our commonly thought of State militia, which protect our freedom overseas, equipped with some of the most advanced and extraordinary combat technology known to man, but rather the beat-walking protectors of our city streets, adorned in modest riot gear. Viewed as the latter, these “defenders” are policemen, public security and members of the National Guard, and are commonly called on to control, disperse and arrest civilians involved in riot, demonstration or protest. Through that association, Defender’s imagery speaks not to the essential principles our country was built on (e.g. freedoms of Speech and Association), but becomes suggestive of the grittier realities that come with impassioned, angry, and acrimonious public assembly of the disenfranchised. The fact that these particular symbols of security and protection are most commonly associated with a disproportionate response to violence brings forth a bitter irony that’s only further amplified by Mr. Friend’s selected title of ‘Defender’.
The contrast between the immediacy of the title ‘Defender’ and its symbolic representation through shift-based police forces in riot gear, underscores an undeniable truth that we’ve come to live in a modern grey area that makes our childhood notions of absolute security, both personal and national, seem almost quaint. This juxtaposition of name and imagery is a sly manipulation that presumably calls on some essential principal that’s worthy of being defended. When viewed in context of current military deployments, this notion has long been undermined by the marketing and instrumentation of an 8+year war that continues to lack any genuine policy or strategy. The real irony is that this sense of security, which fuels our political divide and the ever-widening chasm of national debt, has in itself become as antiquated a notion of what’s possible as the baton and shield are a symbol of law and order. Through the cartoonish facade of heroism as seen within the “defenders”, the series projects the subtle suggestion that we continue to cling to our crass cowboy ideals of the six-shooter and juvenile comic book symbols of strength and showmanship, despite the creeping reality that a knowable and absolute sense of security has come to elude us in modern society.

Invocations of the Media
Mechanically the work is a perfect balance of form and purpose. Each source image in the series has been downloaded from the Internet, printed with inkjet and laser printers, and then transferred to, as well as removed from, the canvas by way of Mr. Friend’s uniquely original technique of “imprinting”.

The process of imprinting incorporates various disciplines of fine art from painting, print-making, collage and image transfer. Through the pairing of addition and subtraction, application and erosion, this process assists in exploring media-based influences on shifting cultural perspectives, as well as the personal arena of memory and loss.

Seen through the ‘Defender’ series, images have been stripped of their literal context to create a sense of confrontation, curiosity and attraction within the viewer. Solitary figures are presented against stark backdrops, their silhouettes hollowed out with elusive textures, while the multi-figure depictions have been deliberately obfuscated through various layers of opaque material. Additionally, the multi-figure compositions are presented within the shifting rhythms of foreground and background, both of which are strained through a distinct geometric rigidity. Ultimately one means of presentation creates a soft static drone, while the other, a cacophonous noise. Add in the muted tones and minor-key hues that remain from textures once applied and removed, and we’re left with mere artifacts, a nagging suggestion of what’s been lost along the way. Once again, by combining the textual cues of the series’ title with authoritarian imagery, Mr. Friend captures that transformative moment where we call on our defenders to rise up and become the aggressors. Yet when channeled through the fabric of his imprinting technique, this moment carries a strong sense of moral ambiguity. Taken to its logical end, that ambiguity brings the audience to a more critical question of who’s the aggressor and who’s the defender, and places the viewer at the heart of that question as passive victim or in knowing complicity.

Ultimately the images of ‘Defender’ remain consistent with the serial explorations of media influence that define all of Mr. Friend’s work. While images in the media play an obvious and indelible role on our collective consciousness, Mr. Friend is reaching toward the implicit question of how these images lead to the acquisition (or assumption) of information. This question weighs the partisan politics, economic justifications and personal biases of our media institutions, as those influences can create a canyon of misunderstanding and misinterpretation that sit between the presumed purity of physical realities and the propagation of their media signals to society. The net effect is a record of modern history that has become as much a living, breathing thing as the events that inspire it.

Brandon Friend
Precipice
* Imprinted Acrylic / Mixed Media on Canvas
36″ x 54″
2011



Precipice (detail)



Precipice (detail)



Precipice (detail)



Brandon Friend
Front Line
Acrylic / Mixed Media on Canvas
22″ x 30″
2010



Brandon Friend
Front Line (detail)

* Imprinting is a unique process that I developed over 10 years as an approach to painting, fundamentally layer based mark making that employs various methodologies rooted in painting, print-making, collage, and image transfer. ©

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Artist Files 2010 – Brandon Friend from Manny Nomikos on Vimeo.

LIC Studio
Summer 2011