Becky Brown, Silent Disco, 2024. Acrylic on canvas, 16 x 20.
Parts & Labor invites you to “Was That Your Phone or Your Last Breath?”, a Contemporary Art Month bash at The Laundromat! It’s going to be a great time! See recent work by resident Becky Brown, coupled with performances by resident Birddog, with local openers Bill Baird and Jack Mitts.
6:30-7:30 — Art Opening in the Laundromat
7:30-9:30 — Performances in the Courtyard
***Free wine, beer, batched cocktails, and noshes.***
***Please park offsite at Dignowity Park.***
Becky Brown Bio
Becky Brown was born in Manhattan and lives in Buffalo, NY. Her work explores technology’s effects on language, meaning and communication. Since so much of daily life happens on screen, she celebrates what is lost: material presence and the handmade mark, alternatives with the power to restore attention and joy. She gathers text from online life (news, advertising, social media), and reinscribes it with a human touch through bright, hand-painted lettering and vivid pattern. With layered paint and “trompe l’oeil” effects, large projects take the form of notebooks, lists and other functions replaced by digital substitutes. Other compositions resemble screen layouts, with painterly irregularities that act as visual interference, disrupting routines of online life and the attention economy.
Brown received her MFA from Hunter College and is an Assistant Professor at SUNY University at Buffalo. Solo and two-person exhibitions include PS122 Gallery (NYC), Arts+Leisure Gallery (NYC), the Handwerker Gallery (Ithaca, NY), Raft of Sanity (Buffalo, NY) and Fort Gondo (St. Louis, MO). Group exhibitions include The Drawing Center, Queens Museum, Freight+Volume Gallery, Pratt Manhattan Gallery and A.I.R. Gallery (all NYC); Last Projects (Los Angeles); Buffalo Institute of Contemporary Art and Hallwalls (Buffalo, NY) and Religare Arts Initiative (Delhi, India). She has been an artist-in-residence at MacDowell, Yaddo, Millay, Edward Albee and Saltonstall Foundations, among others. Her installation No, said the Fruit Bowl, in an abandoned home, was described in the New York Times as “machines vomiting as if in a bulimic’s nightmare.” She has received grant funding from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts and Bronx Council on the Arts. Her work has been written about in the New York Times, the New York Observer, Hyperallergic, Two Coats of Paint and ArtSpiel, among others. Her critical writing has been published in Art in America and The Brooklyn Rail.
+ Learn more about Becky Brown.
Bill Santen Bio
Bill Santen was born in Lexington, KY and currently lives in Buffalo, NY. Between songwriting and the visual arts, he makes portraits of human and natural subjects, using observation, oral history, memory, reenactment and poetic interpretation. As the songwriter and musician Birddog (1995-2005), he released five records, covered in publications including Pitchfork, Mojo and ACE Magazines, and included in films and plays. Birddog has collaborated with musicians Elliott Smith, Glenn Kotche, Edith Frost and Jason Lowenstein. Since returning to songwriting in 2013, he has played at venues including Pianos, Pete’s Candy Store, the Greene Space and Dixon Place (NYC), Nietzsche’s and Fitz Books (Buffalo, NY) and Horseshoe Tavern (Toronto). As a visual artist, Santen works in 16mm film, video, sculpture and photography. Projects have been screened, performed or exhibited at Queens Museum, Thomas Erben Gallery, Nicole Klagsbrun Gallery and the Bronx River Art Center (all NYC), Raft of Sanity and Play/Ground (Buffalo); and abroad at the Masc Foundation, Vienna, Austria; Wschodnia Gallery, Lodz Poland; and the Overgaden Museum of Contemporary Art, Copenhagen, Denmark. He has been an artist-in-residence at Mildred’s Lane in Narrowsburg, Pennsylvania; and earned his MFA from Columbia University and his BA from the University of Kentucky, College of Fine Arts.