In addition to paintings and drawings, the exhibition also features two new sculptures, both of which recall the singular brushwork of Frank Auerbach and the monochromatic bronzes of Willem de Kooning. In We’ll Keep On Dancing Till We Pay the Rent (2022)-the title was imagined by Brown but recalls Sydney Pollack’s 1969 film of They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?-two faces conjoined by one ear are balanced precariously on a tiny neck, while a curious hand and pointing finger drift up from a smoky, barren, dreamlike background.

Here Brown takes as his sources studies by Jan Willem Pieneman (1779–1853) and Jan Van Noordt (1623/4–after 1676). The title of Im Gestein (2019–21)-in English, “in the rocks”-refers to a section of György Ligeti’s Lux Aeterna, a musical composition forever linked to Stanley Kubrick’s film 2001 (1968). The inspiration for the face is Pompeo Batoni’s study La Religion (before 1757), while the figure is based on a drawing by Jan Willem Pieneman, and the palette derives from Maurice de Vlaminck’s Femme au chien (1906).

In The Over-Soul (2022), Brown juxtaposes a female profile with the image of a male seated figure, garlanding the surreal result in curls of coral, sapphire, yellow, and purple. The work still hinges on art history and maintains his characteristic surrealist-symbolist look, but now Brown’s marks are bigger and bolder and his colors more fantastical, making every rendering intensely graphic and charged with accelerated motion. The artist’s exacting mark making, which produces intricate loops and swirls of paint that appear to glide and float across the canvases’ surfaces, infuses these works with an ethereal vitality.Īfter his last New York exhibition in 2014, Brown spent time concentrating exclusively on drawing, describing it as “the skeleton that holds the composition of any painting together.” In this exhibition, the technique becomes his starting point each painting is based on an appropriated drawing. The new paintings on view in New York include double portraits, twisted figures, and a large-scale still life with ripened quinces. By harnessing the lingering allure and historical resonance of old master drawings, he transforms their past imagery into something rich and strange. Wielding a broad knowledge of art history, literature, music, and popular culture, Brown creates images and forms in which divergent references collide and playfully coexist. Gagosian is pleased to present We’ll Keep On Dancing Till We Pay the Rent, an exhibition of new paintings, sculptures, and drawings by Glenn Brown. It is always about getting some internal understanding of reality out. Art, to me, has never felt like a description of reality.

Glen brown