ERIC BROWN
Eric Brown
What is in the Way is the Way, 2021
Oil on paper
10 x 14 inches
ERIC BROWN
Amagansett (6-30), 2020
Oil on canvas
14 x 18 in.
Untitled (4-17), 2020
Color pencil and graphite on paper
14 x 11 in. paper
18.5 x 15.5 in. framed
Spirit, Groan Inwardly While We Wait I, 2022
Oil on canvas
36 x 24 in.
Spirit, Groan Inwardly While We Wait III, 2022
Oil on canvas
36 x 24 in.
Spirit, Groan Inwardly While We Wait II, 2022
Oil on canvas
18 x 24 in.
Spirit, Groan Inwardly While We Wait IV, 2022
Oil on canvas
18 x 24 in.
Estival, 2022
oil on canvas
36 x 40 inches
Threshold, 2021
Oil on canvas
16 x 20 inches
Nightfall, 2022
24 x 30 inches
oil on canvas
Previous
Next
“…..as Klee’s paintings did, that the spiritual in art might happen at small scale, rather than in grand, orchestral gestures.”
by Martha Schwendener, The New York Times, January 22, 2020
ERIC BROWN
Lives and works in New York
ARTIST BIO
Eric Brown received a B.A. in Studio Art from Vassar College. In 2020, he received a Master of Divinity from the Union Theological Seminary. He is a painter and a chaplain. He is the recipient of the MacDowell Fellowship (2016) and was the Visiting Artist and Scholar at the American Academy in Rome (2015). He has had numerous solo exhibitions, including at Isle Arts, Crush Curatorial, James W. Palmer Gallery, Theodore: Art, The Art Center at Duck Creek, and Jennifer Baahng Gallery. His works have been featured in Artcritical, ARTnews, The New Criterion, The New York Observer, and The New York Times. He lives and works in New York and Sag Harbor.
Related
JANET TAYLOR PICKETT, ZHANG HONGTU, PINK and THE CORPSES
Previous
Next
Madison Avenue New York
Janet Taylor Pickett, Zhang Hongtu, PINK and THE CORPSES
October 5 – October 31, 2023
R.C. Baker
Eric Brown
Deborah Buck
Bell and Ganassi
Jaye Moon
Mr.
Janet Taylor Pickett
Zhang Hongtu
We are pleased to announce the group exhibition Janet Taylor Pickett, Zhang Hongtu, PINK and THE CORPSES, which runs from October 5 through October 31, 2023. The exhibition marks the New York premiere of Janet Taylor Pickett’s works, previously only shown at the Oceanside Museum of Art in California, that probe a personal and collective past to posit a distinctly Black mythology of Self.
This is also the debut of Zhang Hongtu’s never-before-seen Shan Shui Paintings from his personal collection. Zhang’s Shan Shui series spans several years and explores the categories of “East” and “West” in a distinctive manner, reflecting his life in two cultures. He reimagines the work of seventeenth-century Chinese artists in the vibrant colors and brushwork of Monet and Vincent van Gogh.
On view includes works by R.C. Baker, Eric Brown, Deborah Buck, Bell and Ganassi, Jaye Moon, and Mr. selected from the online exhibition PINK and THE CORPSES.
WATCH THE VIDEOS
RELATED:
The Brooklyn Rail reviews RC Baker’s solo exhibition, “…and Nixon’s coming” the draft
by Emily Warner
June 4, 2009
BROOKLYN RAIL reviews Deborah Buck: INTO THE WILD, To Crash Is Divine
September 28 – October 27, 2023
Jaye Moon is included in the New York Foundation for the Arts exhibition
October 30, 2022 - October 29, 2023
Janet Taylor Pickett is included in Century: 100 Years of Black Art at MAM
February 9 - July 7, 2024
ALREADY AND NOT YET
Rome, 2022
Oil on canvas
18 x 14 in.
In The City In May, 2022
Oil on paper
10 x 14 in.
In December, 2021
Oil on canvas
11 x 14 in.
Horizon (6-12), 2020
Oil on canvas
24 x 20 in.
Shroud, 2021
Oil on canvas
24 x 30 in.
The Particulars of Rapture, Triptych
2022
Oil on canvas
14 x 43 in.
Untitled (Textile), 2022
Oil on canvas
24 x 30 in.
The Presence of Everything, 2022
Oil and graphite on paper
11 x 14 in.
Spirit, Groan Inwardly While We Wait, Quadtypichs,
2022
Oil on canvas
72 x 82 in.
Previous
Next
ALREADY AND NOT YET
By Eric Brown
May 5 - June 25, 2022
JENNIFER BAAHNG is pleased to announce the gallery representation of Eric Brown and his inaugural show, Already and Not Yet. The exhibition is a showcase of small and easel-sized paintings and works on paper created since 2020. Central to this new body of work is process. Brown employs the sacred process of repetitive mark-making and a meticulous and personal approach to painting to create literal and visual weavings. The resultant paintings appear as handmade textiles that invite an up-close looking. Already and Not Yet evokes metaphors of strength and vulnerability, imperfection, mending, and domesticity. The exhibition will be on view from May 5 through June 11, 2022, with an opening reception on Thursday, May 5, 2022, from 5 pm to 8 pm.
At first glance, the works in Already and Not Yet suggest woven textiles, but they are not paintings of textiles or any singular subject, moment, or linear plot. Drawing on philosopher Roland Barthes’ theory that text is a living fabric interwoven with multiple meanings, Brown shows in these works a striving for a new painterly language. Where it is the nature of semantics to constrain and shape meaning, his painted marks-on-canvas offer a “longhand,” open to the vastness of interpretation, capable of suggesting more than just partial answers.
The Particulars of Rapture (2022), named after a poem by Wallace Stevens, is comprised of three paintings that echo each other with similar themes but individually look different. A visual tension materialized, the work is an elegant manifestation of the cerebral conundrums questioned by the artist. Painted freehand, there is a tenderness of human engagement.
The concept of “already but not yet” was proposed by theologian Geerhardus Vos, who believed that we simultaneously live in the present age and await an “age to come.” Brown observed that amidst the unimaginable loss and suffering especially during the early days of the pandemic, even in our collective wait for a return to “normalcy,” we continue to live.
Spirit, Groan Inwardly While We Wait (2020), created around the first weeks of the pandemic, is the source from which the rest of the works in this show originated. It consists of four various sized panels configured into a cross with an implied fifth panel in the center. Determinedly cross-hatched, through symbolism and abstraction, the work refers to human form and nature. It is calm, temperamental, compelling, and yearning for everyday small miracles.
Intimate, quotidian, diaristic, potent, the works in Already and Not Yet are neither realist nor expressionist. They are direct and unadorned. Repeated delicate marks seemingly fluctuate with natural light and heave in breathing spaces. Already and Not Yet proposes that the spiritual in art may happen on a small scale, rather than in grand, orchestral gestures, and reveals the artist in pursuit of a new abstract vocabulary.
Eric Brown received a B.A. in Studio Art from Vassar College. In 2020, he received a Master of Divinity from the Union Theological Seminary. He is a painter and a chaplain. He is the recipient of the MacDowell Fellowship (2016) and was a Visiting Artist and Scholar at the American Academy in Rome (2015). He has had numerous solo exhibitions, including at Ille Arts, Crush Curatorial, James W. Palmer Gallery, and Theodore: Art. His works have been featured in artcritical, ARTnews, The New Criterion, The New York Observer, and The New York Times. He divides his time between New York City and Sag Harbor.
Related:
LOVE DIFFERENCE
Previous
Next
LOVE DIFFERENCE
May 15 – June 15, 2021
Eric Brown
“My recent paintings were made during a pandemic. Making them was a daily meditative practice. It was like keeping a journal. French philosopher Roland Barthes draws an analogy between text and textiles (“text” comes from the Latin texere, to weave). Through a repetition of mark-making, my paintings appear woven. They are not painted to look like textile. Their appearance is a byproduct of the painting process. The completed painting is a record of my experience making it. The eye follows “threads” of paint, their accumulation creating a larger whole. My new work is paradoxical: slow yet fast, precise yet open, deliberate yet intuitive. I am freer for having made them.”
Janet Taylor Pickett
“My Blackness is a declarative statement in my work. There are wonderful discarded objects brought home by my father and botanical prints my mother found from various second hand stores. Makers of things and tellers of stories surrounded me. In the late 1960’s and early 1970’ in the midst of sociopolitical activities, I began to formulate an aesthetic language, a visual synergy. The symbolism of the African American quilt, the pejorative images of the watermelon became part of my cryptology.”
Zhang Hongtu
…In Memory of Tseng Kwong Chi (1991) is a photo series that looked to the work of one of Zhang’s contemporaries, the Hong Kong-born performance artist Tseng Kwong Chi, who died of AIDS in 1990. Appropriating Tseng’s photographs, Zhang used the work of his friend to further extrapolate upon the mechanisms by which iconography constructs identity and how artistic intervention can disrupt the language of power. Created for the 1991 exhibition Dismantling Invisibility; Asia and Pacific Island Artists Respond to the AIDS Crisis, Zhang’s work selected fifteen photographs from Tseng’s acclaimed self-portrait series East Meets West (also known as the Expeditionary Self-Portraits, 1979-89) and reconfigured them into photo collages using his familiar epoxy technique. In these photos, Tseng performed the role of “ambiguous ambassador” and posited himself the stereotypical tourist sites (the Eiffel Tower, the Grand Canyon, the Hollywood sign) while dressed in a Mao suit. The series was a subversive yet ludic exploration of cultural identity, perception, and the status of the individual amid the monumental. In Zhang’s reworking of these photos, he cut out the figure of his close friend and colleague, leaving a ghostly silhouette in his absence. The removal of Tseng’s body next to the famous profiles of monuments and natural wonders created a displacement that was not only a deeply sentimental tribute to a dear friend, but, in the words of Zhang, “dismantled” the imagery further, disrupting historical continuity…
“Art and China After 1989, Theater of the World”
Guggenheim 2017
Page 237
https://www.guggenheim.org/exhibition/art-and-china-after-1989-theater-of-the-world
Related:
Janet Taylor Pickett is included in Century: 100 Years of Black Art at MAM
February 9 - July 7, 2024