Zoe Brand

2025

“ [LAUGHS] ”

Pressed Aluminum and cord.

170×40×3mm

Signed and dated

unlimited edition.

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Her new exhibition, IT COULD GO EITHER WAY, exploits the transcripts of closed captioning sound effects and music cues. Since 2019, Brand has collected these snippets when she first turned on closed captioning after bringing her newborn home from the hospital. She is both fascinated and amused by these textual descriptions of sounds and music that include phrases [JAZZY FRENCH MUSIC], [WAILING HYSTERICALLY], [MUZAK PLAYING], and [SUDDEN SILENCE]. In previous exhibitions, these captions have appeared sparingly, as pithy punctuation marks. In this exhibition, Brand is going all in. Texts are pressed into thin sheets of aluminium and transformed into signs. Presented on slick, white, stylised shop fittings these objects invoke the familiar visual language of retail, Hung in multiples, as feature pieces, or loitering in bargain bins, texts present a comic-tragic narrative of our time. [EXHALES]