I am an artist based in Brooklyn working primarily in sculpture and mixed-media.

My work grapples with questions of ecology, colonial legacies, and the paradoxical conflict between capitalism and human survival—between productivity and lack, utility and beauty.

In investigating these power structures, I draw from movements including Minimalism, art brut, land art and conceptualism, focusing mainly on abstraction and its history to explore the concept of what it means to benefit from exploitative systems but also be a victim of them.

Working largely with natural materials, my practice is connected to the past and ideas of ritual, while interpolating these traditions into 21st-century object-making that expands on the aesthetic ideas that have come before.

Though initially appearing roughly rendered, my work embraces an emergent order that underpins many contemporary structures. In their unvarnished surfaces, my works reject that preciousness and sheen of consumerism, grounding themselves in the true complexities of modern life.

Email: briankellystudio@gmail.com
Insta: bpkelly89