In Rooms Press Release

In Rooms: From the studio

By Brittany Markert

Join Artist Brittany Markert at Lethal Amounts Gallery for the Los Angeles debut of her ongoing photographic and 16mm project In Rooms. The exhibit will consist of silver gelatin prints, unpublished contact sheets, notes and journal entries, offering a glimpse into the mind and process of the artist. The work is all printed in the darkroom by the artist herself, any manipulation is done in camera or in the darkroom.

New Orleans based artist Brittany Markert (b.1987) rejected a job offer in finance and traditional path of a phi beta kappa graduate of mathematics and moved to New York with two suitcases to pursue a life committed to the creation of art. In an escape from the facades of society, the gender roles witnessed in Southern California suburbia, Brittany turned the camera on herself and created In Rooms, bringing to life the inner world she could not locate or relate to in the world around her.

In Rooms aesthetics echos early cinema, the surrealist art movement, and photographic works of Francesca Woodman, Claude Cahun, Duane Michals, to name a few. In fields dominated by male voices and the male gaze, Brittany set out to expand on the dialogue of desire, sexuality & gender from the perspective of being raised as a woman through her intimate and intentional lens. 

Pain, mental health, trauma, suicidal ideation are not easily understood or comfortable to speak about. Most people approach these matters privately, through solitude, therapy, close friendships or through art and cinema, which can dramatize the experience. Seldom do we meet someone affected by mental illness and these matters who so honestly portrays it. In Rooms confronts her battle with severe depression and observations of societal shadows in a unique, undeniably familiar lens of the collective unconscious.

Through this vulnerable and powerful body of work, Brittany Markert holds a mirror to each of her viewers minds, the process of individuation, catharsis and enlightenment becomes not her own, but each of ours.

 

October 12th, 2019

Lethal Amounts Gallery - Los Angeles, CA

4-6pm - Lecture  (ticket required)

6-9pm - Opening Reception (free to public)