Matthew Brannon

2013

Book, 14 x 20 cm, 72 p, language: English, publisher: Mousse Publishing, ISBN: 9788867490547.
Materials: ink, paper

Collection: Collection M HKA, Antwerp (Inv. no. B 2026/516).

Literary synopsis

Antelope is the first in a trilogy of books (Antelope (2013), Leopard (2013), Vulture (unfinished)). The story involves the use of a department store at night as the settings for a series of performances by a radical theatre group in a university town. The performances escalate to a point where they become realer than real and eventually cost the lives of a few participants. The groups’ run ends when a young girl is discovered dead in the perfume department one morning. A mass arrest occurs at a local movie theatre the following evening. The story is told from multiple vantage points throughout which a love story is woven. 

Relation of the novel to the artist’s practice

Antelope is an artwork that takes the form of a novel, that takes the form of the artist writing a novel and that takes the form of him telling people "I’m an author who wrote a novel". The content of the novel is closely aligned with the pieces of text one often finds in Matthew Brannon's prints and in the titles of his artworks. The novel complicates, and occasionally generates, the sculptures and prints that Brannon made and vice versa.

The novel Antelope provided the key for the various sculptures in the exhibition Department Store at Night (Five Impossible Films, I) which took place in May of 2013 in Florence Italy at the Marino Marini Museum. It was published as an independent book included in a plastic sleeve along with the exhibitions catalogue. The sleeve and the two books were published by Mousse Books on the occasion of the exhibition in an edition of 250. A sculpture called Unlearn (2012) of a perfume shelf and a print called Double Features (2013) of a film festival both refer to the novel Antelope.

Novel's website

Novel's website2