domingo, dezembro 23

Cecily Brown, Londres / Reino Unido - pintura contemporânea

«The Adoration of the Lamb», 2006, oil on linen

«The Father of the Bride» 1999, oil on canvas

«The Picnic» 2006, oil on linen

«Lagoon» 2004, oil on canvas

«Ambush Makeover» 2003, oil on linen

«Red Rum» 2001, oil on linen
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«Maids Day Off» 2005, oil on linen

«Serenade» 1998, acrylic on linen
(em exposição no Museu Berardo Lisboa)

«Trouble in Paradise» 1999, oil on canvas

«Black Painting» 2002, oil on canvas

«New Louboutin Pumps» 2005, oil on linen

«Landscape» 2003, oil on linen

«Dodgy» 2004, oil on linen

«Tales from the Vault» 2005, oil on linen

«Bacchanal» 2002, oil on canvas

«Red Painting» 2002, oil on linen

«Canopy» 2003, oil on linen

«Pyjama Game» 1998, oil on linen

«High Society» (detail) 1997-98, oil on linen
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Artista britânica, estudou Arte e Design na Epsom School of Art (1985-87) e teve aulas de desenho e gravura no Morley College em Londres. Entre 1989 e 1993 estudou Belas-Artes na Slade School of Art, em Londres e, em 1992, frequentou ocasionalmente o New York Studio. Em 1995, teve a sua primeira exposição individual na Galeria Eagle, em Londres. Em 1997 e 1998, expôs na Deitch Projects, em Nova Iorque. No ano seguinte foram organizadas duas exposições do seu trabalho, uma na Galeria Gagosian, em Nova Iorque, e outra na Galeria Victoria Miro, em Londres. Brown participou igualmente em várias exposições colectivas, festivais e concursos de arte entre 1990 e 1998.
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The Berardo Collection, Museu Berardo Lisboa
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Crítica:
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Cecily Brown is one of a group of young English artists currently making a splash on the international art scene. Born in London in 1970, she dropped out of high school at the age of 16 to study art, eventually graduating from the Slade School of Art in London in 1993. The following year she moved to Manhattan where she lives and works today.
Brown's paintings first came to the attention of the New York art world when she exhibited what she called her “bunny gang rape” paintings in a Manhattan gallery in 1997. Notable collectors including, Charles Saatchi and Agnes Gund, were quick to acquire these works and Brown's career was launched.
This painting is from a later series in which fragmented body parts have been totally consumed by the painterly surface. These paintings have been described by art critic Roberta Smith as “… an attempt to juice up and feminize the shop worn vocabulary of abstract expressionism.” The titles that Brown chooses are often taken from Hollywood movies. In this case, the title is taken from the 1950 classic, Father of the Bride. References to brides, the sexually-charged notion of a new marriage, and the suggestions of body parts combine to evoke layers of meaning in this exuberantly painted gestural abstraction. As the artist describes it: “I'm trying to be in a space between abstraction and figuration.”
Jennifer Bayles,
Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York
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La apariencia de la pintura de esta artista es expresionista y a decir del comisario, sus trabajos retoman algunos grandes momentos de la tradición pictórica: Francisco de Goya, Chaim Soutine, Willem de Kooning, Philip Guston, el mismo Bacon. . . y lo hace para "explorar ideas sobre el erotismo paradisíaco del lenguaje pictórico, convertido en jardín o tálamo conceptual (...) Se trata de una ficción convertida en algo absolutamente real - con sus propias leyes - ofrecida al espectador".
Uno de los temas fundamentales en la pintura de Cecily Brown es el erotismo: masturbaciones, orgías... en otras ocasiones, sin embargo, pinta animalitos o figuras que parecen provenir de cómics, en las que el humor se convierte en el tono dominante. Esta mezcla de lo pop con lo expresionista sitúa el trabajo de Brown en el terreno de lo fantástico.
Ocho óleos de gran formato componen la muestra del Espacio Uno. Sus pinturas más recientes, que podrán ser contempladas en ella, ofrecen paisajes sincopados que parecen estar construidos a partir de fragmentos en movimiento. En Lagoon (2004), adivinamos un lago entre ramas, flores y fragmentos de cielo y de montañas. De nuevo, en Ambush Makeover (2003) parecen adivinarse cuerpos emboscados tras hojas y flores. Brown - y se aprecia bien en estos cuadros- comparte con Masson el interés por la ferocidad del instinto sexual y los dramas inherentes a la naturaleza, así como por la representación de órganos genitales como ornamentos naturales.
Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Dona Sofia
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Trouble in Paradise hovers between representation and abstraction, between the depiction of figures engaged in an indistinct sexual act and a bravura display of brushwork. Broad areas of flesh colour on the left of the picture suggest a woman’s parted legs. In the top left corner of the painting is a face, its mouth gaping in pleasure or horror. A grey form in the centre of the composition resembles a man’s naked back. Set against a black background which heightens the drama of the painting, ribbons and swirls of warm colour cover almost the entire surface of the painting.
Brown’s work is a visceral representation of sexuality in paint, with bodies depicted in bold painterly gestures and fleshy colours. Brown’s evident mastery of her medium is evidenced in the fluency with which she moves from anatomical description to sheer exuberant gesturalism. Vibrant red, yellow and pink paint has been worked into the canvas in impasto layers. The painting is covered with a glossy varnish, giving the surface a reflective, tactile finish.
Trouble in Paradise was painted in New York, where the British-born artist has lived and worked since the mid-1990s. It marks a shift in Brown’s work from earlier, more explicit depictions of orgiastic abandon to looser, more allusive imagery. Passages in the painting refer to bits of the anatomy, most obviously in the left half of the image, where fragmented parts of a female body are visible beneath a carnivalesque riot of colour. It is possible to see the head and shoulder of a leering man dominating the top right corner and caricatured mask-like faces appearing out of the swirls in the top left and middle right of the image. Almost as soon as these figures appear they melt away.
The writer A.M. Homes has likened the experience of looking at Brown’s work to undertaking a psychodiagnostic test. She describes the paintings as ‘your personal projection, your retinal Rorschach’ (Homes, ‘Motion Pictures’, Cecily Brown, p.67). The implication is that what is visible in the paintings may be as much to do with the viewer’s projected desires as the artist’s intention. This is confirmed by the artist’s own description of her work. Brown has claimed, ‘the place I am interested in is where the mind goes when it’s trying to make up for what isn’t there’ (quoted in Robert Evrén, ‘A Dispatch from the Tropic of Flesh’, Cecily Brown, p.8). Brown’s style is indebted to the gestural expressionism of Willem de Kooning (1904-97). Her bold use of colour, dramatic variation of brushwork and sexualised subject matter all recall the monumental series of paintings of women de Kooning began in the early 1950s (see The Visit, 1966-7, Tate T01108). The dreamlike eroticism of Trouble in Paradise evokes drawings by André Masson (1896-1987), while Brown’s hybrid biomorphic forms show the influence of Arshile Gorky (1904-48).
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Rachel Taylor,

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