Press Release - Melt by Brett Flanigan
Brett Flanigan - Galapagos
Glazed stoneware. 20.675 x 16.375 inches framed. 2025.
pt.2:
Melt
a solo exhibition by
Brett Flanigan
Opening Reception
Saturday, September 13th at 6pm
On view until
October 26, 2025
pt.2 Gallery
1523b Webster St.
Oakland, CA 94612
pt. 2 Gallery is pleased to present Melt, Brett Flanigan’s first solo exhibition of glazed stoneware. Long recognized for his vibrant abstract paintings, Flanigan’s practice often begins with a set of conditions or rules, but allows for accident, rupture, and chance to shape the outcome. In Melt, he extends this approach into clay and glaze, embracing a medium where unpredictability is amplified, and where the results often exceed the artist’s control.
Each piece begins with what Flanigan calls the “initial condition”: a ceramic slab cut into segments. Rather than brushing on color, he dips these forms into overlapping mineral-based glazes of iron, copper, cobalt, tin, and titanium. Clay retains a “memory” of how it was formed, sometimes fracturing along hidden fault lines. Glazes react chemically in ways that cannot be fully predicted. The heat of the kiln alters color and texture, yielding outcomes that no brushstroke could replicate.
Brett Flanigan - Out of true
Glazed stoneware. 11.75 x 9.75 inches framed. 2025.
For Flanigan, these uncertainties are not obstacles but drivers. With a background in biology and chemistry, he approaches the studio like a laboratory, setting up hypotheses and watching them unfold. The works hover between structure and accident: a break becomes a drawing, a glaze overlap transforms into an unexpected spectrum, a misfire suggests a new path forward.
This embrace of chance has reshaped the scale and intimacy of the work. Where his earlier paintings often sought breadth and vibrancy, Melt insists on close looking—earthy, luminous surfaces that carry both geological weight and painterly sensitivity. Having relocated to Los Angeles three years ago, Flanigan also finds resonance between glaze and atmosphere: the valley haze and smog refracting light into muted yet luminous tones. If painting captures light, stoneware seems to bend and transform it.
Brett Flanigan - Eonglass
Glazed stoneware. 12.75 x 11 inches framed. 2025.
The broken grids, wavering lines, and radiating patterns recall Bay Area Funk and Mission School traditions, but here they are condensed into concentrated, tactile encounters. Titles such as Earth Memory, Delacroix, and Galapagos point to the way meaning accrues after the fact, through resonance and association.Where earlier paintings began with structure and moved toward rupture, these ceramics begin in unpredictability itself—fractures, glazes, and kiln-fire accidents—before building outward into forms that later accrue associations of memory, history, and place.
Melt affirms Flanigan’s commitment to process and discovery, while marking a significant shift in his practice: from painting to stoneware, from monumentality to intimacy, from control to an embrace of material uncertainty.
Brett Flanigan (b. 1986, Great Falls, MT) lives and works in Los Angeles, CA. Flanigan holds a degree in Biology from the University of California, Santa Barbara. He works primarily in painting and sculpture. His work has been exhibited in the San Francisco Bay Area, New York City, Portland, Atlanta and Chicago, as well as internationally in Hamburg, Germany and Warsaw, Poland. Flanigan has also completed a number of public artworks, including a mural at the Lilley Museum at the University of Nevada, Reno, and a large scale public sculpture in downtown Oakland.