Patrick Brennan
MFA ’24 Fine Arts 3D
I Construct Installations
Functioning through breaking down assumptions.
Mocking and poking fun, containing inside jokes, containing irony and wit.
Holding secrets, details, and aspects that encourage and reward careful looking. Mixing ephemeral and long-lasting materials, parts that rot, parts that rats in my studio eat, parts that will outlive human civilization and parts that are built never to need replacement.
Entangling concepts and materials that have no right to be entangled, that my mind, with all its willpower and determination, has decided must go together regardless of that fact.
Informed by history and my contemporaries, by canon and by pop culture, by Bruce Nauman, Joseph Beuys, Robert Gober, Rachel Whiteread, Mike Kelly, Paul Thek, Mathew Barney, Jordan Wolfson, McDonald’s, 9/11, Catholicism, World War Two, video games, internet culture, by my queerness.
Made of found objects, ready-made, and hand-made, with years of learning to sculpt like Michelangelo used to make busts combined with fake eyelashes, used to make silicone dolls that have drowned in kiddy pools, used to create AI-generated crocodiles covered in tar.
I Deconstruct Myself
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Patrick Brennan is an interdisciplinary artist, art educator, and curator residing in Cambridge, Massachusetts. His installations entangle diverse concepts and forms, blending enduring and ephemeral materials to create spaces that invite both immediate sensory engagement and contemplative reflection. Working with mediums such as bubble gum, aluminum foil, concrete, pennies, and circuit boards, he blurs the lines between art and everyday life.
