HALSEY MCKAY GALLERY

Halsey McKay Gallery is pleased to present Sun and Rain, Colin Brant’s first solo exhibition with the gallery. This new body of work comprises paintings in which a figure or figures appear as part of a landscape narrative.

The phenomenon of simultaneous rain showers and sunny skies is referred to by different expressions around the world such as “Fox’s Wedding”, “Rabbits are bowling” and “Elephants have taken flight”. It comes from the idea that such unusual weather conditions must involve a supernatural explanation. A kind of in-between state in which ordinary logic fails and magical things could happen.

Drawing from old black-and-white photos, vintage postcards, film stills, and album covers, Brant builds landscapes with figures that reflect on movement and transformation. The figures conjure the landscape with their dreams and powers of clairvoyance.

The paintings begin with translucent washes of color, allowing pigment to settle into the weave of the canvas and emphasize its texture. Loose, expressive brushstrokes serve as shorthand for light, atmosphere, and vegetation. Layers merge and glow: earthy umbers meet violets and emeralds in vibrant, tactile surfaces. The color is both naturalistic and other worldly.

Two paintings from Hitchcock’s “39 Steps” bookend the exhibition. In that film the protagonist must flee across the Scottish Highlands to stop an evil spy ring and clear his name. Intermittent sun and rain through the rocky heath shows the raw energy of the natural world and presents landscape as a terrain of the imagination.

Brant was the recipient of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship in 2022 and has received grants from New York Foundation for the Arts, and the Pollock-Krasner Foundation. Solo exhibitions include Europa Gallery (New York) , Dutton Gallery (New York), Platform Project Space (New York), Galleria Richter (Rome, Italy) Jeff Bailey Gallery (Hudson, New York), Adam Baumgold Gallery (New York), and Beth Urdang Gallery (Boston), and numerous group exhibitions including James Cohan Gallery, Steven Zevitas Gallery, Lucien Terras, Geoffrey Young Gallery, and Platform Space. He attended the University of California Santa Cruz and The University of Iowa and currently lives and works in North Bennington, VT and Brooklyn, NY.