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Brandon Downing
Brandon Downing, a poet, writer,
researcher and business team member at the New York design firm
C&G Partners, uses antique and 'found' artifacts to convey
his abstract poetic messages. Some of his poems are totally unique,
while others appear to dip into the big closet of conceptual notions
popularized by Tom Phillips's "A Humument" (1970) and,
most notably, Max Ernst's "Une Semaine de Bonte" (1934).
But knowing about these precursors does not diminish the pleasure
of his latest book,Lake Antiquity, designed by C&G's Emanuela
Frigerio.
The cover, a colourful bare-assed
gnome peering at a lugubriously engraved, through serene, lake
,surreallypunctuated by a slew of small geysers, signals the enigmatic
quality of Downing's poetry. Some of the poems are quite abstract,
while others are more overt. Some are recomposed and altered lines
from existing books, while others are phrases from the antique
visuals. He made poems from cut lines pasted on solid coloured
papers, restaurant menus and patterned wrapping paper.
It is fruitless to excerpt any
of them here (they must be appreciated in context), but Downing
does acknowledge a list of 'published materials that I excerpted
to relieve of their contents over the duration of this project'.
And he adds, by way of thanks: This project would never have taken
place in its current form without the everlasting and affordable
support of the X-Acto brand of cutting blades and cutting products,
never mind the ever-improving army of consumer glue sticks by
Pritt, Saunders / UHU, Office Depot and the durable, glorious
Scotch / 3M Clear.
