The drawings are made in response to the frame, with swirls and overlapping elements often appropriated from the fine, wooden carving. Some of the drawings are set in antique frames gathered by the artist from various regions in Italy. The black ink or paint, applied with brushes, is often layered on a coloured ground with white highlights, mimicking the process of Old Masters such as Abraham Bloemaert, or Albrecht Dürer.
The drawings are similarly complex, layering a range of influences that are at once strange and familiar, grotesque and delicate.
Glenn Brown, Black Ships Ate the Sky, 2020 Flowing curls create a sense of baroque movement, encouraging the eye to wander both across and in and out of each painting, as enigmatic subjects and titles unravel into odd narratives. Bodies and faces intertwine, leaving the viewer with an uncanny, unsettling impression. Acid pigments and winding lines create deformed and impalpable portraits, with the colours appropriated from the artist’s own earlier paintings. Conceptually distinct from Appropriation Art, Brown’s artistic process demonstrates where his focus essentially lies not in the base image per se, but rather in the possibilities which derive from it.įor his fifth exhibition with the gallery in Berlin, Brown will present a selection of new and recent paintings, drawings and sculptures. Starting with published or downloaded versions of his sources, he manipulates the imagery digitally before beginning to paint on panel, further transforming them into works of an unparalleled uncanniness, where colours and forms undergo further re-assessment. The sources for Brown’s practice are found in the works of Old Masters, Surrealists or artists such as Karel Appel, Frank Auerbach or Georg Baselitz, as well as sci-fi painters like Chris Foss. Transcending time and pictorial conventions, Brown’s work disarms common distinctions between beauty and abjection, heightening the emotive tension present within. At the core of his practice is the blending of artistic periods and stylistic genres. One of Britain’s most revered contemporary artists, Brown works across painting, drawing and sculpture, taking as his source material reproduced imagery from art history and popular culture. | #2898ARTatBerlin | Galerie Max Hetzler presents from October 31st, 2020 in both galleries Bleibtreustraße 15/16 and 45 the exhibition And thus we existed with paintings, drawings and sculptures by the artist Glenn Brown.
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