Albany Center Gallery (ACG) presents Then and now: Brian Cirmo. The exhibition runs from September 6 to October 18, 2024. Then and now exhibits feature work by artists who have shown at ACG previously and whose careers have made a significant contribution to the local art community. An Artists’ Reception will be held on Friday, September 6, 2024 from 5 - 8 p.m. Then and now: Brian Cirmo is free and open to the public; Tuesday - Saturday, Noon - 5 p.m.

Cirmo’s involvement with ACG started when he first visited in 1997 after transferring to the College of Saint Rose as a BFA student in Painting. When he graduated from Saint Rose in 1999, the College held the Senior Exhibition at ACG; which was his first time exhibiting here. From 2004-2017, Cirmo was an adjunct professor at multiple Capital Region universities and brought numerous students to ACG to see exhibitions. In 2010, he was one of three artists selected for the Artists of the Mohawk Hudson Region Invitational exhibition at ACG. In 2013 and 2017, Cirmo curated two exhibitions at ACG. In 2017, Cirmo received ACG’s prestigious Mona Ruth Brickman Memorial Artist of the Year Award.

Then and now: Brian Cirmo will feature over 30 of Cirmo's paintings. Cirmo spent the past two decades traveling throughout the United States visiting museums, large cities, small towns, national parks, Civil War battlefields, assassination sites, graveyards, and national monuments. He is a lifelong student of the vast profundity of American music as well as a glutton for American history, literature, western painting, film, comic strips, and cartoons; all of which have consumed his nights and days. These interests and practices are used within his process to create intertextuality in the work. Using Western painting, literature, popular culture, personal memories, history and travel as sources, Cirmo is focused on creating paintings that encapsulate characteristics of the human condition, such as life and death, love and loss, evolution and creationism, comedy and tragedy, fame and anonymity, conflict and harmony, and morality and immorality.

Brian Cirmo is an internationally exhibiting artist and a 2023 recipient of the Lillian Orlowsky and William Freed Foundation Grant. He has an M.F.A. from the State University of New York at Albany and teaches at Pratt Munson in Utica, NY. Cirmo has been featured in solo exhibitions including All the feels, ProjekTraum FN, Friedrichshafen, Germany; Where teardrops fall, 532 Gallery Thomas Jaeckel, New York, NY; So much depends on the weather, Kevin Kavanagh Gallery, Dublin, Ireland; Paintings, Lake George Arts Project, Lake George, NY; Black, the Rice Gallery, McDaniel College, Westminster, MD, and Patterns, Cycles, and Change, Wilson Gallery, Le Moyne College, Syracuse, NY. Cirmo’s works have also been featured in group exhibitions including Provincetown Art Association and Museum (PAAM), Provincetown, MA, Salem Castle and Monastery, Salem Germany, GR Gallery, New York, NY, 19 Karen Gallery, Mermaid Beach QLD, Australia, the Joyce Goldstein Gallery in Chatham, NY; Mills Gallery, Boston Center for the Arts, Boston, MA; The Hyde Collection Museum, Glens Falls, NY; Kellogg Gallery, Cal Poly University, Pomona, CA; and Antenna Gallery, New Orleans, LA.

Cirmo’s work has been featured in several publications including Vast Magazine, Lunch Ticket Magazine, the Matador Review, Gambling the Aisle Magazine, and Studio Visit Magazine. Curated exhibitions include Our Heads and Masters of War at Albany Center Gallery; Abstract /'kelCHer/, OCC Art Gallery, SUNY Onondaga, Syracuse NY, and The Roaring Twenties, Joyce Goldstein Gallery, Chatham, NY. In addition, Cirmo has completed artist residencies at The Saltonstall Foundation, Lake Constance Cultural Department, Salem Germany, The Vermont Studio Center, Salem Art Works, and the Elizabeth Murray Artist Residency.

The exhibition is made possible by ACG Premier Sponsor Kevin Dubner, Partner & Wealth Manager at Steward Partners Global Advisory, LLC. Additional support is provided by Kevin & Cindi Dubner, ParkAlbany, Gillian Hamilton, and the New York Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and New York State Legislature. This exhibition is also made possible in part by the Albany for All funding program and the President's American Rescue Plan (ARPA).