Synopses & Reviews
Poetry. Art. Poetry X eleven = LAKE ANTIQUITY. LAKE ANTIQUITY = a rectangular swimming pool in the E.U.R. district in Rome, built by Benito Mussolini to be heralded at the 1942 World Expo as the epicenter of Fascism. Brandon Downing's LAKE ANTIQUITY meets the challenge of this absurdity and countless ineradicable others. The culmination of more than a decade of visionary irreverence, this fulminating iteration of text-collages makes a perfect holiday gift for the poetry lover. Brandon Downing has scoured refuse piles and skimmed the creme/scum off the top of two centuries of cultural production for these chiming elements. His paste-ups are cut-ups; his cut-ups are pasted with a discrimination that shares a border with insurgency.
Synopsis
"Downing's greatest achievement so far. . . . It is made up entirely of collages of vintage art . . . and he has delicately illustrated these weird landscapes with text cut from old books. . . . Lake Antiquity makes it clear that Downing is a genius of juxtaposition."and#151;The Stranger
Synopsis
"Downing has sequenced his collages with cinematic pacing; you fly through these pages as you might in a dream."
--Bookforum
About the Author
Brandon Downing is a videomaker, visual artist, and writer, originally from the San Francisco Bay Area. Since 2000, he has lived in New York City, where he works as an exhibit designer and writer. His poetry collections include The Shirt Weapon (Germ, 2002), and Dark Brandon (Faux, 2005). A feature-length DVD collection of recent video works, Dark Brandon // Eternal Classics, was released in 2007.