2017 Catalogue Archive

Like other artists who emerged in the 1980s as part of the so-called Pictures Generation (including Cindy Sherman, Sherrie Levine, and Robert Longo), Troy Brauntuch has, for many years, made work that delves into the complex presence of images in contemporary life. Like much of his early work, Untitled (Bullet Factory) features photographic images whose original source is unknown. Simply through their juxtaposition and Brauntuch’s composition do they gain new, if ambiguous, meaning. Here, a faraway view of a factory is the setting for the figure located at lower left. The image of the man is sourced from a newspaper or book (hinted at by the printing dots) and appears in a circle cutout – movie shorthand for a close-up peek through a telescope or binoculars at some clandestine activity. Brauntuch’s work is in numerous public collections and has been featured in a number of museum exhibitions.