Restrain Reviewed in Sculpture Magazine

Brendan Fernandes’s new works cast bondage in bronze. His current exhibition, “Restrain” (on viewthrough January 11, 2020), features bronze coils suspended by leather straps from live-edge walnut supports. Titles inject context, connecting these looping suspensions to the formations of kinbaku, or “tight binding,” the Japanese practice of aestheticized bondage. Screenprints titled Stud feature studs shaped like tiny chrome balls, pillows, or bullets arranged in formation around a central void, looking as if a biker jacket had been deconstructed and re-imagined on a two-dimensional plane.