Waiting 101 is contemporary artist Brett Amory’s second solo exhibition at Lazarides’ Outsiders Gallery, and opens on April 19th. The show focuses on this Oakland-based painter’s incorporation of new technologies, namely, the iPhone and Instagram, into his documentation of the Bay Area’s people and landscapes. The moments Brett chooses remind me of something novelist Kurt Vonnegut wrote: “Here we are, trapped in the amber of the moment. There is no why.” I feel this way looking at Brett’s paintings, something about this communal longing paused and solidified.

Brett’s Waiting series has been evolving for over a decade now, and the nuances of what he is looking for have naturally shifted. “When I first started the series, the idea and approach were more straight forward. I was commuting to work by train so most of the work was train paintings. It was more about waiting to be somewhere else.”

When Brett returned to the series in 2007, the concept had evolved, and the way he wanted to paint had changed. “I was still interested in waiting to be somewhere else, but I was also exploring ideas of not being present. While we wait most of us are not in the now. We are thinking of our past and anticipating the future. I thought by removing the environment, the viewer would focus on the feeling of the work first and aesthetic second.” Brett tries to evolve the concept with every show, each of which is a sub series within the larger Waiting series.

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