Amy Brener

Using inventive mold-making and casting techniques, Brener fuses everyday objects and personal imagery into her sculptures. The resulting forms are at once familiar and strange, resembling otherworldly monuments, reliquaries and garments. Her work seeks to level hierarchies between sacred and mundane material, questioning what we choose to preserve and discard. 
 
Brener was born in Victoria, BC, and moved to New York City in 2007. Since graduating with an MFA from Hunter College in 2010, her sculptures have been exhibited at galleries and institutions across the US, Canada, Europe and China. Highlights include MoMA PS1 and Socrates Sculpture Park in New York, the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas, Galerie Pact in Paris, Wentrup Gallery in Berlin and Riverside Art Museum in Beijing. Her work has been featured in publications such as The New York Times, Art in America, CURA, Artnet News and The Brooklyn Rail.

Recent Courses Taught

Introduction to Drawing
Introduction to Sculpture

Distinctions

Emerging Artist Fellowship, Socrates Sculpture Park, Astoria, NY, 2018
The Shifting Foundation, Project Grant, 2018
Canada Council Visual Arts Project Grant, 2017
NYFA Fellowship in Crafts/Sculpture, 2015

Select Publications

• Will Heinrich, Art Reviews: Amy Brener, The New York Times, December 4, 2019
• Rebecca Storm, Amy Brener’s Consolarium, Editorial Magazine, December 2, 2019
• Francesca Aton, Amy Brener on the Ritual Use of Utilitarian Objects, Art in America, November 22, 2019
• Alina Cohen, These 8 Artists are Using Silicone to Create Strange, Radical Artworks, Artsy, March 25, 2019
• Owen J. Duffy, Amy Brener's Anachronic Matter, CURA, issue 25, 2017

More

Select Exhibitions

• 2020, Incidental Monuments, Sibler Art Gallery, Goucher College, Baltimore, N.Y.
• 2020, Cult of the Crimson Queen, Ceyson & Bénétiere, New York, N.Y.
• 2019, Consolarium, Jack Barrett, New York, NY (solo)
• 2019, Pairings: Sculpture in the Nasher & Rachofsky Collections, Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas, Texas
• 2019, Layer Mask, Fosdick-Nelson Gallery, Alfred University, New York
• 2019, Continuous Refle(a)ction, Riverside Art Museum, Beijing, China
• 2018, Towards a New Archaeology, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Brooklyn, N.Y.
• 2018, The Socrates Annual, Socrates Sculpture Park, Astoria, N.Y.
• 2018, Myths, Wil Aballe Art Projects, Vancouver, Canada
• 2018, Body So Delicious, Reyes Projects, Detroit, Mich.
• 2018, States of Matter, Zeitgeist Gallery, Nashville, Tenn.
• 2018, Flexi-Shields Survey, Adelphi University Art Gallery, Long Island, N.Y. (solo)
• 2018, Shellwork, Karen Azoulay and Amy Brener, Erin Stump Projects, Toronto, Canada (two-person)
• 2017, Amy Brener/Lucas Blalock, Bottle, Comb, Crutch, Wrench, 315 Gallery, Brooklyn, N.Y. (two-person)
• 2017, Invisiblers, Galerie Pact, Paris, France (solo)
• 2017, Veils, Aquarius Studios, Queens, N.Y.
• 2017, Tu es Métamorphose, Galerie Pact, Paris, France
• 2017, Her Eyes are Like Doves Beside Streams of Water, Adams and Ollman, Portland, Ore.
• 2017, Four High, Tiger Strikes Asteroid, Brooklyn, N.Y.
• 2017, Vein Section, Berthold Pott, Cologne, Germany
• 2017, Parallel City, Ms. Barbers, Los Angeles, Calif.
• 2017, Futur Futuriste, Galerie Projet Pangée, Montreal, Canada
• 2016, and, something like fire dancing, Susan Hobbs Gallery, Toronto, Canada
• 2016, GEOMAGIC: Art, Science and the Zuhl, University Art Gallery, NMSU Las Cruces
• 2016. Future Perfect: Picturing the Anthropocene, University Art Museum, U at Albany
• 2016, OnSite, Katonah, Katonah Museum of Art, Katonah, N.Y.
• 2016, Other Better Things, Annual Exhibitions, Los Angeles, Calif.
• 2015, Greater New York 2015, MoMA PS1, Queens, N.Y.

Appointed to the Faculty

2020

Educational Background

M.F.A., Hunter College
B.A. University of British Columbia