Passing Notes

Passing Notes: New Works by Brian Brown opens on June 29th at VillageOne Art, with an opening reception the evening of Thursday, July 7th. Brown presents paintings from the past two years that create subtle mystery and a sense of fantasy. These hyper realistic oil paintings create strange, unintelligible narratives framed within natural phenomena, such as presenting a presumed family portrait in a space station, a young boy in an amusement park airplane and an eerie light illuminating a rocky outcropping. Brown shares just enough of his subjects to propel the viewer to want to know more about the composition they encounter.

Brown’s piquant and insouciant painting style lends a familiar yet unsettled air to his artworks. His formal style contains hints of David Hockney, Alex Katz, and even Leonora Carrington in the bizarre yet realistic perspective presented in these paintings. None of his works are what they seem, even when viewing the seemingly straightforward portrait works present on view, such as “Passing Notes” and “What is a Straight Line.” Brown’s paintings approach the viewer directly, borrowing from the lexicon of the normal and expected, before subverting the anticipation of the viewer into new, often idiosyncratic, at times grotesque, visions.