Carol K. Brown
dal 24/3/2008 al 25/4/2008
Segnalato da
24/3/2008
Carol K. Brown
Nohra Haime Gallery, New York
Based on photographs she takes of people on the streets, Passersby are paintings of isolated homeless people that create a tension between the rawness of the subject matter and the beauty of the painting. On show also a series of prints entitled Home Decor.
Based on photographs she takes of people on the streets, Carol K. Brown’s
Passersby are paintings of isolated homeless people that create a tension
between the rawness of the subject matter and the beauty of the painting.
Are the Passersby the transient subjects depicted in the paintings, or are
they us, the viewers?
Brown had been working on the Passersby series when a collector, after
buying one of the paintings, commented that he enjoyed living in a
neighborhood where everyone “looks the way I do.” There is a fascinating
irony that someone would spend money on a painting depicting a person he
would go to extremes to avoid in real life. The realization of this
attitude, perhaps not an uncommon tendency, was the impetus for the related
series of prints entitled Home Décor. Brown sees them as an expression of
the tension she felt as a child growing up in an elegant New Orleans home, a
city where the lines between beauty and poverty were often blurred. While
these images could be read as a scathing social critique, the “not in my
neighborhood” impulse is rampant in all economic strata. The edginess of the
images is heightened by the obvious tenderness she feels for her subjects.
Perhaps the ultimate irony lies in Brown’s series of refined looking dinner
plates depicting images of hungry people. These are provocative images,
flouting conventions.
Opening Tuesday March 25 from 6 to 8 p.m.
Nohra Haime Gallery
41 East 57th Street - New York
Free admission