KIDD YELLIN is pleased to present Brian Wondergem’s first solo show. In recent years, being primarily focused on producing public works, Wondergem moves from the outside in to address the idea of ‘exhibition space’. It is this response to the interior of space and its conventions and restraints that informs the work in this show. Playing on the typical constructions of an interior, door frames, stairs, fluorescent lighting, he puts forward what we take for granted and therefore what we forget to see. Going further, he addresses the way in which we define an interior—-industrial versus the comfort of the domestic. The works themselves turn the outside in and expose the guts of structures, the inner mechanisms are set on a viewing stage, one that in turn asks us to invert our own comfortable perception.

Many of the works exhibited will use materials that are conventional to the design and creation of an interior. With the use of elements such as door frames, stairs, studs, and fluorescent lights, Wondergem questions the modern interior, transforming the familiar into something uncomfortable. These works will not necessarily critique the gallery space they are exhibited in, but they are an investigation into the starkness of an industrial space versus a comforting domestic one. As Wondergem states, “Where basic white sheetrock symbolizes transparency and cleanliness, there is also a stage being set of neutrality towards the particular works that will be displayed. The inner workings of a space are not always so transparent and are often misleading from the way we interact with art in everyday contexts.” These works take the behind-the-scenes components of structures and spaces and places them front and center. This re-prioritizing of everyday material and object can have a disconcerting effect, but Wondergem weaves together the known and the untried in a playfully quizzical way.

Brian Wondergem is a sculptor and installation artist living and working in Brooklyn, NY. Born in Tennessee, he received an M.F.A. in sculpture at Yale School of Art. He exhibits regularly around the New York area. He has participated in shows with Socrates Sculpture Park, the Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art, as well as shows at ABC No Rio, Apartment Show, and Gallery Aferro. In the Spring of 2010 he participated in Art in General’s Eastern European Residency Exchange Program, where he worked with the Croatian Council of Artists to create a series of public works in Zagreb, Croatia. This past summer he participated in NADA Hudson with the Brooklyn based gallery Regina Rex.