Arts at W&M
Andrews Gallery Presents: Juan Brenner - Abundant, Life Giving and Cruel
Access & Features
- Open to the public
POSTPONED: Due to Inclement weather, the artist talk and reception will take place on Friday (2/21) from 4-7pm. The Lecture will begin at 5pm at the Muscarelle Museum of Art conference hall next door.
The Andrews Gallery is pleased to present a solo exhibition by Photographer and Artist Juan Brenner: Abundant, Life Giving and Cruel.
Abundant, Life Giving and Cruel brings together five years of Juan Brenner’s creative output, research, and investigation into the complex cultural conditions of the Guatemalan Highlands. Juan’s photographs provide us with a map of the region, tracing thousands of years of the multiversal terrain, where time is presented as a thread that simultaneously tangles and untangles narratives as a trans-temporal paradox. Through Juan’s images, we are able to visualize the full spectrum of a historically networked ecology latent within the landscapes and inhabitants of the Highlands—representing a reality all their own, and most importantly, a projection of the future of humanity.
The exhibition celebrates the release of Brenner’s new monograph, Genesis, published by Guest Editions, UK. Copies are on view in the gallery foyer.
The exhibition continues in the newly reopened Muscarelle Museum of Art, adjacent to Andrews Hall.
Juan will travel from Guatemala City to William & Mary for a reception and artist talk on FRIDAY February 21 from 4-7pm in Andrews Hall. The Lecture will begin at 5pm at the Muscarelle Museum of Art conference hall next door. We hope you will join us.
About Juan Brenner:
Juan Brenner is a self-taught photographer living and working in Guatemala City.
After working in New York as a fashion photographer for over a decade, Brenner returned to his native Guatemala where he began making work about the people and complex territory in the country’s Western Highlands.
Juan uses photography to reflect on the fluidity and abstract nature of identity and territory, his images capture the complexities of cultural hybridization and, more poignantly, the way power, hierarchical structures and inequality are instrumentally continued through time.
Brenner’s first monograph, Tonatiuh, was shortlisted for the 2019 Paris Photo–Aperture Foundation First PhotoBook Award. For the same project, he was a winner of LensCulture’s 2019 Emerging Talent Award
His works have been featured in publications including Aperture, British Journal of Photography, Le Monde, VICE, C-41, Aint Bad, Fisheye, Booooooom, California Sunday Magazine, Paper Journal, Collector Daily, I-D Magazine, Dazed and Confused, Pardo, Loupe, Palm Studios, Metal Magazine, Musee, JOIA and Balam Magazine.
He is a founding member of Proyectos Ultravioleta in Guatemala City.
Sponsored by: Art & Art History, Reves Center, The Charles Center, Muscarelle Museum of Art, Department of Anthropology, Department of Latin American Studies