10.25.13 – 11.30.13
Nick Brown explores the southern California coast at night with a camera and headlamp. He waits for low tide, photographing creatures and plant life left in shallow pools when waves recede. The resulting spot-lit photographs become source material for his thickly impastoed oil paintings. For Brown, the pools and life forms are a meditation on impermanence, natural cycles, and physicality.
These dense, lush paintings have as much as an inch and a half of paint coming off the surface, while in other areas naked, exposed canvas is used to represent sand. The darkness of the paintings is initially misleading; a closer look reveals a world of color and depth. Compact and focused, these small-scale works are as much objects as images.
Brown’s work has been shown at The Drawing Center, NY; The Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; The Chicago Cultural Center; and at numerous galleries, nationally and internationally. He received an MFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Accompanying the exhibition was a musical soundtrack composed and recorded by the Los Angeles duo Cardoo. The music was created specifically for the exhibition. Cardoo is Aniela Marie Perry (cello, electric cello) and Marisa DeMeglio (classical and electric guitar).
