Brian Cirmo

To and Fro 

Free Event
July 11–August 4
Museum of Art   |   Pratt Munson Gallery

Opening Reception: Friday, July 12, 3–5 p.m.

ARTIST STATEMENT

I have spent the past two decades traveling throughout the country visiting, museums, large cities, small towns, national parks, Civil War battlefields, assassination sites, graveyards, and national monuments. I am a lifelong student of the vast profundity of American music and a glutton for American history, literature, western painting, film, comic strips, and cartoons; all of which have consumed my nights and days. These interests and practices are harvested and used within my process to create intertextuality in the paintings.

Greil Marcus, the American author, music journalist, and cultural critic writes, “There is no theme richer for the American artist than the spirit and the themes of the country and the country's history. We have never figured out what this place is about or what it is for, and the only way to even begin to answer those questions is to watch our movies, read our poets, and our novelists, and listen to our music... America is the life's work of American artists because they are doomed to be American.”

Drawing from historical, literary, pop cultural, personal sources and memories, my work is focused on building stories that encapsulate characteristics of the human condition within the American experience.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Brian Cirmo (1977) is an internationally exhibiting artist and a recipient of the 2023 Lillian Orlowsky and William Freed Foundation Grant awarded by the Provincetown Art Association and Museum. Solo exhibitions include 532 Gallery Thomas Jaeckel, NY, NY; ProjekTraum FN, Friedrichshafen, Germany; and Hawk and Hive Gallery, Andes, NY. Group exhibitions include Provincetown Art Association and Museum, MA; GR Gallery, NY, NY; 19 Karen Gallery, Australia, Boston Center for the Arts, Boston, MA, and The Hyde Collection Museum in Glens Falls, NY. His work has been included in multiple Art fairs including CONTEXT Miami, Pinta Miami, and Aspen Art.

Cirmo has been an Artist in Residence at the Saltonstall Foundation, Ithaca, NY, the Lake Constance Cultural Department, Salem, Germany, the Vermont Studio Center, and the Elizabeth Murray Artist Residency, Granville, NY. His work has been published in Vast Magazine, Lunch Ticket Magazine, the Matador Review, Gambling the Aisle Magazine, and Studio Visit Magazine. Curated exhibitions include Our Heads and Masters of War at Albany Center Gallery; Abstract /'kelCHer/ at the OCC Art Gallery, SUNY. Onondaga, Syracuse NY, and The Roaring Twenties at Joyce Goldstein Gallery, Chatham, NY. 

Cirmo was born and raised in Utica, NY. He has an M.F.A. from the State University of New York at Albany. He lives and works in Albany, NY, and teaches at Pratt Munson in Utica, NY.