Auxiliary Projects is excited to present a selection of constructed assemblage sculptures by Adam Brent from September 12 through November 23, 2014. This is the gallery’s first exhibition in its new location in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. We will host an opening reception on Friday, September 12, from 7-10pm in conjunction with Greenpoint Gallery Night. The gallery is open Saturdays and Sundays from 1-6pm and by appointment.

Adam Brent’s sculptures combine handcrafted, found and 3D-printed elements into startling chimeric forms each with a distinctive personality. Brent’s materials include small found objects, hand-finished hardwood, broken or carved ceramic fragments,  and 3D printed patterned shapes. Broken and wrongly-reassembled ceramic animal figures play a central role in many works, making them seem almost to possess consciousness. Like sentries they gently patrol the space from their meticulously unbalanced wall-mounted perches.

Brent’s fusion of vintage domestic objects like doilies and ceramic figurines with stained and finished wood and geometric-patterned 3D printed forms result in unsettled mash-ups representing entirely new mutations of objects. Each sculpture seems to reveal a specific instance of a breach in the time-space-continuum in which a garage sale table exploded at Design Within Reach. For instance, in Brent’s sculpture “Tom” a badly broken and haphazardly-reglued white bunny figurine sits on a piece of sanded multilayered laminate panel, jutting out of an unrelated ceramic bowl mounted on its side to a pearlescent 3D-printed lampshade shape which is then attached to the wall. The result is cute, hopeful, sad, confusing, awkward, well-made and distressing all at once.

A year ago Brent abruptly moved with his family from Brooklyn back to Good Hill, Connecticut, where he spent his childhood. Since then his life has dramatically changed and he has found himself in a state of flow, not entirely driving his life but rather drifting through it.  The Situationist Guy DeBord defines drift, the dérive, as an unplanned experimental journey in which the aesthetics of one’s surroundings direct one to locate a new and authentic experience. Usually, however, the dérive is presumed to occur in an urban environment. With the title “Good Hill Drift,” Brent suggests that when drifting in Connecticut, he excavates an aesthetic terrain in which a lifetime of memories and associations materialize, demanding his attention. The singular authenticity of the resulting work confirms that the psychogeographic method works even in the country.

In addition to Brent’s solo artwork, he is a principal-founding member of the BroLab Collective, with whom he works to create environments for human interaction in both interior and exterior settings.