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29/2/2008

Brett Cody Rogers

Praz-Delavallade, Berlin

Questioning the relationships between gesture and figuration, colour and light, both natural and synthetic is at the core of Brett Cody Rogers’ approach to painting. Constructed with stylized marks and aggressive colour combinations, the paintings often depict landscapes, architecture and elements of modern interior design.

Rogers’ paintings fluctuate between figuration and abstraction, yet even when the paintings are more pictorial, they are simultaneously composing and fragmenting their content. In effect, the paintings become phantasms of their subjects, as these references are represented as abstract events.
This most recent group of paintings are inspired by the story of « E.1027 », the famous Côte d’Azur house built by Eileen Gray and Jean Badovici, on which Le Corbusier painted a suite of eight murals without Gray’s permission [1]. She regarded the murals as an act of “rape,” violating the spirit of her house.
The conflicting relationship between architecture and painting becomes a focal point of Rogers’ investigations.
In looking at the “Black Paintings,” which reference colors and geometries pulled from the interior design of Le Cabanon, as well as modified forms from the murals painted on the E.1027, these new works are increasingly abstract. What is interesting Rogers is how these forms serve to both create representations of objects and spaces while calling them into question.

In the “Black Paintings,” geometries, colors and forms repeat and are reconfigured confusing representation and abstraction through the depiction of abstract forms. They can be described as glowing colored geometric forms and sweeping gestures emerging from an inky black abyss as if the forms were translucent or backlit by an artificial light source.

The gestural brushwork undulates and mixes together, creating violently shifting architectonic planes of color, resulting in dark atmospheric spaces from which light seems to be projected. Here, new spaces are created through nothing but an arrangement of gestures and paint, and combinations of synthetic and organic pigments creating an interior light that radiates from the paintings.


[1] Built in 1928, « E-1027 » is the major realization of Eileen Gray and embodies her very personal conception of modernist architecture. It was also the heart of a very complex relationship Le Corbusier had with this house, and in front of which he finally died while swimming in the Mediterranean. This confused link between admiration and desire finally lead Le Corbusier to intrusively appropriate this place for himself. First, he painted a suite of eight murals at the invitation of Jean Badovici, but without the permission of Eileen Gray. She regarded the murals as an act of rape, violating the spirit of her house. Later he built his famous « Le Cabanon » overlooking the house. With the publication of photographs of the murals by Le Corbusier, mentioning the house but omitting Gray’s name, her authorship was offended another time.

Praz-Delavallade
Holzmarktstrasse 15/18, Bogen 48 - Berlin

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