Wandering Rainbows

MARQUEE PROJECTS is pleased to announce Wandering Rainbows, the gallery’s first solo exhibition by Chicago artist Daniel Bruttig. A reception for the artist will be open to the public on Friday, August 2nd from 5 pm to 8 pm; and an artist interview/talk will begin at 5 pm. The exhibition will run from Saturday, August 2nd through Sunday, August 25th, 2019.

Interdisciplinary artist Daniel Bruttig explores the liminal space between sculpture and painting. For Wandering Rainbows, Bruttig presents the current state of his ever-morphing body of work, where the fabricated, minimalist object fuses with both synthetic and natural readymade materials. By stretching, binding, and manipulating lanyards, yarn, pom-poms, vintage fabrics, and thermoplastic adhesive (hot glue), Bruttig re-contextualizes the colloquial craft materials that figured prominently in his youth and creates a fascinating and mesmerizing optical experience. 

Viewers will see wall sculptures slathered with whipped cream-like paint, some appearing to be gutted cuckoo clocks and others to be leafy branches torn from trees – references to an archaeology of the artist’s Wisconsin upbringing (hunting, birds, rifles, forests, and tchotchkes hung on wood-paneled basement walls). Bruttig’s “paintings,” on the other hand, make no use of paint at all but are composed of brightly colored lanyards or hot glue mixed with crayons, coyly riffing on minimal aesthetics of contemporary art. Shown together in this exhibition, Bruttig’s paintings and sculptures deliver unexpected and sumptuous surprises via new forms abstracted through intensive material investigation. 

Daniel Bruttig (born 1975, Milwaukee, WI) received a BFA from the University of Illinois at Chicago in 2001, and his MFA from the Department of Art Theory and Practice at Northwestern University in 2010. His work has appeared in group and solo exhibitions in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Toronto, and Milwaukee; and at the Renaissance Society of the University of Chicago, Hyde Park Art Center, and Evanston Art Center. He is included in collections in Moscow, Twitter New York, San Diego, Chicago, Madison, Milwaukee, and other locales. In 2009, Bruttig received the Dedalus Foundation nomination; and, in 2010, the Joan Mitchell Foundation Emerging MFA nomination. Bruttig lives and works in Chicago, IL.