Massimo Audiello is pleased to announce An Uncertain Nature, Alison Brady’s second solo exhibition in the gallery.

An Uncertain Nature is the artist’s continued exploration into conventionalism perverted, and introduces her latest series of “historical” portraits, as well.

As in her earlier work, Brady contorts banal landscapes and interior scenes of quotidian domesticity into arresting surrealistic tableaux. Meticulous consideration is given to setting, wardrobe, and props to manufacture the uneasy effect of besmirched pleasantness: an elegant young woman seated for a stiffly formal portrait is defaced by a featureless mask of rosebuds; a vacation snapshot is rendered awry with the subject mysteriously inverted, plunged up to her waist in the sand of a lakeside shore. The images toy with issues of feminism, sexuality, and body image and invite the viewer to contemplate new perceptions of the mundane.

In an extension of this examination of subverted familiarity, Brady’s historical portrait series is a tongue in cheek interpretation of Northern Renaissance portraiture. Her courtly attired subjects pose somberly, their visages uncomfortably distorted by ungainly quantities of spaghetti overflowing from their mouths.

By unabashedly marring all that is deemed demure, ceremonious, or insipid, Brady’s work proves that our common reality is merely a springboard to propel oneself into alternate realities.