Cudelice Brazelton IV: Mortal Surface

Cudelice Brazelton IV's works are magnets. He uses them to glean what he finds in the urban landscape, in the street, in factories and studios: fabric, leather, metal, cardboard, and all sorts of implements. He arranges these materials and things atop one another and side by side in collages, assemblages, and sculptures, staging encounters also between the contexts in which they originated and what he calls their " undercurrents," their subtexts. Such frames of reference, including that of the exhibition space, play a key role in his art, an aspect he will occasionally engage quite explicitly, creating site-specific works for some settings. This makes the space the context and a part of the piece, sometimes physically so, as when Brazelton works directly on the walls. The recent works gathered in this catalog were displayed in a former railcar repair workshop. It is hard to imagine a more industrial, " metallic" environment. There, as between the covers of this catalog, Brazelton's works appear to their fullest advantage, becoming veritable magnets drawing the gaze.