Brendan Lynch has been pursuing an essence in the flags of idiocy that brand the stereotypically unaesthetic substrata in our contemporary society. In this exhibition, he does not focus on any particular beauty or aesthetic power in the abstracted materials associated with such generalized groups as deadheads, construction workers and high school students. Rather, he channels the mechanism of distraction, straying entirely from any sort of focus at all, in an almost accidental exploration ultimately deemed worthy. In his ability to capitalize on this habitual auto-piloting of compulsive action through his physical art making, Lynch is able to distill the metaphor of the inactive thinker into crude, comedic and dioramic truths. The cliché and irony in the vignette of Isaac Newton under the apple tree deviates not far from Lynch’s translation of the generic acid trip as the tie-dyed envelope for the most mass-produced human replica – the mannequin. The ever-cheapening structure of the Jansport backpack achieves a compelling presence in rewound stupidity. Filled with every student’s classic abstract conception of his or her bag’s burdensome contents —pure concrete and shards of broken glass – they are sprinkled with the cheapest of all allusions to aesthetic potential and the metaphor for all vapidity: glitter. In the slapdash application of joint compound, Lynch suggests a brutish lack of awareness of any possibility of delicate endeavor, forgiven and resolved simply and honestly by the premeditation revealed in the enamel undercoating. This is his constant triumph. The answers are always there; grasped and supplied first, buried crassly, but not deceptively, under layers of indulgent, apparent tastelessness. It is here where the commentary resonates and his honesty is so unique and so consistent. And it is here, to be thus honest, where that particular beauty and aesthetic power confronts us every time. - Zachary Susskind