Sharon Brant: Infinite & Ineffable
by Matthew Deleget

The following text was published in the exhibition catalogue Sharon Brant on the on the occasion of the artist’s solo exhibition MINUS SPACE, Brooklyn, NY, 2012.

I met Sharon Brant about a decade ago, but I feel like I’ve known her a lifetime. I can’t recall precisely how we crossed paths, but my visual acuity is all the better for it. For ten years I’ve followed her work and ideas with great interest. I’ve spent countless hours with her in her studio, both her former one in Jersey City, as well as her new one up in Beacon. We’ve discussed everything about everything, exhaustively: her background and influences, her aesthetic concerns and the challenges she faces, all in minute detail.

During visits to her studio, I regularly assail her with questions. But more often now we simply stand side-by-side and just look at her work without speaking, nodding every now and again. We are past words at this point.

Her work is also present in my small Brooklyn apartment.  It’s an essential part of my quotidian surroundings and I’ve looked at it every day for ages now. Day in and day out, in and out of weeks.

After all this time, I’ve come to realize one thing. Sharon’s work reigns over me. And here’s why. I can never anticipate where her practice will go or what her next move in the studio will be. But I’m never really concerned about it. In her case, I always trust the cook. 

In her practice, Sharon never elects to take the easy route. She never accepts the obvious choice. Sharon never makes Sharon Brants. After more than four decades of laboring in the studio, she is far from drifting into complacent auto-pilot. With each new successive body of work, she ups the ante. She is continually learning, honing her scalpel-sharp sensibilities, and probing her select materials for opportunities.

Painters often paint themselves into a corner, but Sharon is an exception. She confronts the corner head-on and razes the entire room. Her practice knows no walls, no floor, no ceiling. It is boundless. In her studio she can see the curvature of the Earth. In her materials she sees the potential for infinity.

At heart an optimist, Sharon asks a profoundly simple question. What if? And her work is that relentless investigation laid bare, where inquiry always trumps result. The word conclusion is just not part of her lexicon.

I admire many things about Sharon’s work. What I admire most though is how her work commands, no, demands your attention. And yet it does so –- paradoxically -– with the least amount of visual information possible, never more than just two or three elements. Her work possesses an uncommon clarity, yet remains ineffable and enduring.

In Sharon I see an inquisitive, contemplative mind. That much is evident. But I also see a profound awareness and acceptance of her aesthetic predilections, as well as an exhaustive understanding of materials and a masterful resourcefulness with each. And finally I see an uncompromising editor of her own practice, which is the rarest of qualities among artists. To me all of these traits are virtuous and are the underpinning of her past and present work, not to mention her work yet to come. 

With all of this in mind, I am pleased to present Sharon’s new paintings and works on paper at the gallery for the very first time.