Glenn Brown: And Thus We Existed

Glenn Brown’s swirling, grotesque figures emerge from uncanny manipulations of old and new masters

In this volume, British artist Glenn Brown (born 1966) presents a selection of recent works across painting, drawing and sculpture. Brown’s work disarms common distinctions between beauty and abjection: he takes the protagonists of his paintings from old and new masters such as Raphael, Boucher, Delacroix or Baselitz, whose figures he alienates, mutilates, digitally manipulates and covers with seething color gradients and bands of swirling color. In Brown’s drawings, the bodies and faces intertwine, bound together by looping lines, leaving the viewer with the uncanny impression of a schizophrenic self, as the artist notes. In his sculptures, color grows into space: brushstrokes flee the plane into a third dimension, threatening to smother the antique bronze figurines they grow from. Conceptually distinct from appropriation art, Brown’s artistic process demonstrates where his focus essentially lies; not in the base image, but rather in the possibilities that derive from it.