Through scrutiny and amplification, Brown displaces motifs from their original context. Measuring over ten feet in width and taking the title of Salvador Dalí’s 1936 painting, Necrophiliac Springtime (2013) is a meticulous arrangement of decaying yet inexplicably steaming flowers made giant against the backdrop of a haunting landscape, their intense aroma suggested by diaphanous wisps curling into the night sky. With characteristically fleshy textures beneath remarkably flat and glossy surfaces, the scenes evoke traditional memento mori. In paintings completed over the last three years, including some of his largest works to date, Brown confronts traditional subjects of still life and portraiture. In sophisticated compositions that fuse diverse histories-of the Renaissance, Impressionism, and Surrealism-Brown creates a space where the abstract and the visceral, the rational and irrational, the beautiful and grotesque, churn in a dizzying amalgamation of reference and form. Borrowed figures and landscapes are subjected to a thoughtful and extended process of development in which they gradually transform into compelling, exuberant entities. Through reference, appropriation, and investigation, he presents a contemporary reading of images new and remembered. His mannerist impulses stem from a desire to breathe new life into the extremities of historical form. Mining art history and popular culture, Brown has created an artistic language that transcends time and pictorial conventions.

This will be his first solo exhibition in New York since 2007. Gagosian New York is pleased to present an exhibition of recent paintings and sculptures by Glenn Brown. For me they exist in a dream world, a world that is made up of all the accumulated images stored in our subconscious that coagulate and mutate when we sleep. I like my paintings to have one foot in the grave, to be not quite of this world.

Glenn brown artwork