 Oh Me, 2004 Acrylic on canvas, 24 x 18 inches Brian Calvin Anton Kern Gallery is proud to present the first solo exhibition of artist Brian Calvin in New York. He currently lives and works in California. Brian Calvin's paintings are a continuation of the narrative of the figure in painting; weird and quietly disconcerting, the mischievously witty paintings are a meditation on that practice. Blank-faced characters are cast in frozen moments that form no narrative. The perspective recalls an awkward landscape survey with flattened palate and skewed cropping. Yet as paintings, they are amazingly coherent. Calvin builds them up by using simple lines and matte color patches to transform the ordinary into something enchanted. The painted scenes are overlays of reality, detached elements that form a cerebral puzzle. Frames, smoke rings, a landscape painting and tropical vegetation act as mysterious evidence linking his work to art history. The bi-dimensionality of the work lulls the viewer into a meditative state. Even as the paintings veer toward abstraction they retain instances of magically vanished moments. "To me, all of my work is a contemplation of painting and it's possibilities, so it feels natural to sometimes make works involving the act of painting. I strive to think through painting, not to paint what I think". (Brian Calvin) Brian Calvin's work was featured in "Painting Pictures - Painting and Media in the Digital Age" at the Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg in Wolfsburg, in the California Biennial at the Orange County Museum of Art in Newport Beach, CA and at Baja to Vancouver at the Seattle Art Museum. He was also part of the traveling exhibition "Dear Painter, paint me...", which originated at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris in 2002 and then traveled to the Kunsthalle Wien and to Schirn Kunsthalle in Frankfurt. Exhibition: September 9 - October 16, 2004 Gallery hours: Tue-Sat 10am - 6pm Anton Kern Gallery 532 West 20th Street USA-New York, NY 10011 Telephone + 1 212 367 9663 Fax + 1 212 367 8135 Email info@antonkerngallery.com www.antonkerngallery.com |
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