Glenn Brown: Patrick Painter, Los Angeles

The paintings will include new adaptations of work by Frank Auerbach, often a source for Brown’s work. These paintings are re-created in Brown’s perversely accomplished technique, however, the figures are now more isolated from their backgrounds which have been smoothed and blurred. The current Auerbach paintings illustrate a new use of pictorial space, as well as continuing the artist’s preoccupation with portraiture. Auerbach is employed as a vehicle to reference other art historical figures.

Brown also pays homage to Salavdor Dali, another source for his work. In the painting Oscillate Wildly, the artist takes a work by Dali, stretches and reverses the image and paints it in black and white. These manipulations also link the painting to such diverse references as Dali’s dream sequence in Hitchcock’s Spellbound and Picasso’s Guernica.

Brown’s sculptures, in which Auerbach portraits are brought to three dimensions, will also be on view in the exhibition. These pieces underscore the new spatial developments in the paintings. The artist will also include photographs based on reproductions of paintings by Dali and Picasso.