Introduction

Gost Log presented a selection of key works by Matti Braun from the preceding fifteen years, along with new works specifically made for the exhibition. His delicate paintings on silk, prints, objects and installations are often based on stories and on histories of specific people or ideas but draw from these his own formal and conceptual explorations. Referring to different craft traditions, contemporary aesthetics, design and fashion, Braun’s work focuses on moments of intense exchange between global cultures. His practice explores cultural misunderstandings and their impact on forms and ideas, elucidating social and aesthetic developments that may have been overlooked or buried. Following his research interests, Braun develops an eclectic and elaborate mesh of concepts that challenges conventional interpretations of Modernity. Central to Braun’s practice is his particular approach to referencing: certain images, objects or names are deliberately employed, but left open in their meaning in relation to the exhibition. We could read them as formal arrangement of artifacts, or as glimpses of an extensive rhizomatic network of ideas and cultural practices, or both.