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Art From Underground
Bret Barrett was born into a large family in Green Bay, Wisconsin in 1966. His motivation for drawing, painting, and making things developed early in his childhood and was driven by his day dreams. His imagination was immediately impacted by the Apollo moon landing in 1969. His passion for creating Art, moved him to attend the Milwaukee Institute of Art And Design and the Fine Arts program at the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee from 1984 to 1988. Both institutions provided valuable knowledge and insight for him. The urban environment he lived in was awash with the discarded remnants of our convenience-driven society and the refuse and detritus found use in Bret’s work. He taught himself rudimentary electronics. Using lights, motors, and gears from discarded consumer devices, he engineered repurposed materials into motion in his artwork.
His paintings are informed by all styles throughout Art history, especially early to mid-20th-century European and American art, where artists’ minds and lives were profoundly impacted by the technological and psychological catastrophes of 2 World Wars. He has always been inspired by biology and scientific discovery in relationship to Art. His kinetic (moving) sculptures and paintings are quixotically quizzical constructions of contemplation which bring a cheerful optimism to dark and weighty topics. His work has been featured in exhibitions and galleries across America. The most art historically relevant, yet barely known fact of Bret’s career is that he sold a shadow of one of his moving wall-mounted sculptures in 2011 at the Zeph Alt gallery in San Diego, CA.
He has maintained artist collectives and independent studios as part of a thriving art scene in Milwaukee during the 1980s and 1990s and in San Diego, California, from 2000 to 2018. His work is collected by private collectors and Art enthusiasts of every kind. Art writers and critics have referred to his art as “Low Brow” or “Pop Surrealism” for their lack of larger reference. The best way to describe Bret’s visionary work is Alternate Realism and Kinetic Surrealism. He continues to create in a studio in Green Bay. He is a huge cheerleader for Art and artists.