Biography

Brian Bishop attended The School of Visual Arts in New York, NY; Memphis College of Art in Memphis, TN [BFA 1993]; and Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, MI [MFA 1995]. Prior to joining the faculty at The University of Alabama in 2002, he taught at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, The University of Memphis, and Memphis College of Art. In addition to his teaching experience he has also served as Director and Curator of the Art Workers Union/Plan B Gallery in Memphis and as Director of Exhibitions at Memphis College of Art. He has exhibited his work in 22 states including solo exhibitions at the Cheekwood Museum of Art in Nashville, TN; The University of Delaware in Newark, DE; Arkansas State University in Jonesboro, AR; Artspace in Raleigh, NC; Georgetown University in Washington, DC; and at Youngblood Gallery in Atlanta, GA. His work has also been shown in group exhibitions at The National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC; Old Dominion University in Norfolk, VA; David Klein Gallery in Birmingham, MI; Agnes Scott College in Atlanta, GA; Rawspace, New York, NY; the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art (SECCA) in Winston-Salem, NC; The Delaware Center for Contemporary Art in Wilmington, DE; Zeitgeist Gallery in Nashville, TN; Jacksonville Museum of Modern Art in Jacksonville, FL; City Without Walls in Newark, NJ; The Art Museum of The University of Memphis; Musawwir Art Space in Midland Park, NJ and the Creative Arts Workshop in New Haven, CT . His work was also featured in the inaugural exhibition at Gallery 111 in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Artist Statement

The principle interest of my studio practice is the exploration of the fine line between the forgotten or overlooked moment and the fetishized memory as simultaneously seen through the filters of portraiture in the west, snapshot photography and the contemporary cultural phenomenon of constant surveillance. Inevitably it also addresses memory, as it is known through photography, and questions if these moments represent truth or fiction. Through this work I mine the landscape of the common, the mundane, the banal, and the fragmented as they are presented in the context of notation, documentation and memory. It navigates the intersection of the overabundant surveilled image and the poignancy of the intimate vignette or home movie. Implied narratives and contexts are generated on the margins, between the images and outside the frame. The resulting images appear disjunctive and out-of-context, alluding to the “lost” images on a roll of film, the in-between moments and the “throwaway” image - the mistake.

"... It’s no exaggeration to say that some of these pieces are stunning. Bishop’s sense of composition has grown more radical and sophisticated over the years, so the manner in which the image fills the plane is disturbing yet satisfying, shaking our equilibrium yet resolving the tension between form and content. More spectacular, however, is the evidence of the sheer joy that the artist derives from the practice of his method, both in application and in his vivid sense of color. Too often contemporary encaustic work feels flimsy, wispy and misty; Bishop’s models draw you in, compelling you to stand inches from the surface, feasting on the texture." - excerpt from "A Splash of Great Painting" by Fredric Koeppel, The Commercial Appeal (Memphis, TN), January 21, 2005

"When the frame shifts, stories change. Bishop challenges us to account not only for what is outside the frame of his works, but also to interpret the narrative that ties them together. His focus on what lies between the edges of things forces us to think about the time that connects events. Bishop refers to his pictures as “documents,” and by enlarging these uncontrived scenes, and rendering them so beautifully, he shows how representational art can show truth both by what it depicts and by what it leaves outside the frame." - excerpt from "The Spaces Between: Brian Bishop’s 'The Longest Year' " by Glenn Perkins, The Spectator (Raleigh, NC), December 27, 2001

"...Bishop is indeed an intelligent painter, and a painter of intelligent images – a rare beast on the fast track to extinction, sticking his head out of the oily sludge that is abstraction and the kitschy dreck that is landscape and the sophomoric compost that passes for expressionist narrative. Painting has been, by and large, a quaint anachronism for at least a generation now. Like most of its more percipient practitioners, Bishop is well aware of this fact; this exhibit is mostly about that fact." - excerpt from "Chatter Boxed" by Cory Dugan, The Memphis Flyer, April 13, 1998