Summer in America means road trips, evoking notions of freedom and adventure, of spectacular landscapes and expansive skies.  The work in “Summer Road Trip” at Rena Bransten Projects doesn’t show that kind of road trip.  Taking a cue from John Water’s hitchhiking journey from Baltimore to San Francisco, chronicled in his recent book Carsick, our summer group exhibition explores the off-putting, humorously mundane, and potentially creepy sides to hitting the road. 

Instead of feeling the freedom of an open road, Doug Hall’s lens points to the very construction of the open road experience and its mind-numbing monotony while Tracey Snelling’s sculptural amalgamation of strip malls reminds us of the claustrophobic mundanity of road-side rest stops.  Henry Wessel, Tracey Moffatt, and Len Jenshel train their eyes on those ordinary moments at intersections, lengths of road, and motels that become strange - if not outright eerie - when framed so exactingly.  Eirik Johnson’s almost anthropological study of mushroom farmers in Oregon provides a glimpse into the non-mainstream communities peppered across the country and Martin Mull’s painting of farm pastiche brings a wry perspective to the endless fields of the Midwest.