In seiner neuen Ausstellung in der Galerie Max Hetzler in Paris lässt sich Glenn Brown von Zeichnungen der alten Meister inspirieren, die er auseinandernimmt und wieder zusammensetzt, mit überraschenden Farben und unkontrollierbaren Schwärmen von Pinselstrichen versieht: „Die Pinselstriche scheinen zu schweben“, sagt der Künstler im Gespräch mit Ben Luke. „Sie fliegen davon, als ob die Energie des Körpers so überschäumt, dass der Körper nicht ausreicht, um sie zu fassen, und sie den Raum um sich herum aufnehmen muss.“ Indem Brown den Figuren, die ursprünglich nur aus ein paar skizzierten Linien bestehen, Fleisch auf die Knochen gibt, führt er aus der Position eines Künstlers des 21. Jahrhunderts einen historischen Dialog darüber, was es heißt, Mensch zu sein.

THE ECSTASY OF GLENN BROWN
(Auszug aus dem Essay von Lizzie Perrotte)

An anonymous 14th-century mystical text proposes that abandoning oneself in ecstasy in “the cloud of unknowing” can expand perception and relational being beyond human bounds. In the Altogether is a gathering of new paintings by Glenn Brown at Galerie Max Hetzler that unfolds a mystery of mattering with an ecstatic aesthetic that stimulates unknowing. Brown’s exhibition is intoxicating. There is a psychotropic overload of revving color and quivering surfaces. There is agitation and murmuration from works that speak in tongues. This is an uncanny resonance produced through Brown’s miraculous mixing and dubbing of pictorial references. Allusive titling amplifies the intense vibrations, invoking a hoard of spectral forms that time travel through the exhibition spaces as figures of speech, music, and literary references. There is a risk of vertigo in this virtual realm. Spatial coordinates are unmoored. It feels like a world turning upside down, spinning beyond human control.

The hand of Plastic Soul (2024) gestures fervently to orchestrate a ritual or performance. What does this floating gesture signify? Is it a promise or a threat? There is so much to consider. It could be conjuring air for a magic trick or ready to raise the dead. A fascinating swarm of dark brushstrokes gathers in its palm, opening a “fertile wound” or stigmata. Perhaps Plastic Soul shimmers through a fog of mattering as an after-effect of ancient ecstasy. These cold blue fingertips might belong to a Medieval saint who, once upon a time, reeled back in the pleasure and pain of transfiguration. Whatever the origin, the gesture is liberated from any stronghold of meaning or temporal context. The trembling hand is now in play, conducting the ecstatic aesthetic of the show. It gestures a wild tempo of painterly forces that surge and bloom through Brown’s works as sensorial events. Brown claimed: “I am trying to keep the viewers’ eyes moving, sliding and dancing across the surfaces of the work, like a piece of music by G.F. Handel.”

Sonnet Lover (2024) presents a spectral figure, masked in Venetian carnival costume who personifies the exhibition’s performative spirit and ecstatic aesthetic. A billowing cloud of black lines manifests a dancing energy; sinuous twirling that moves perhaps to the rhythms of Handel’s music. Brown crafted each flourishing gesture slowly with minute blended brushstrokes. His painting performs the illusion of a bravura sketch that entwines and choreographs imaginary drawings by Rembrandt and Tiepolo. The cloud of lines draws forth a mysterious Maestro who looks back over one shoulder as though “leading us on” to somewhere else; into the unknown. Brown overlaid an enigmatic title that transports thoughts further into a realm of poetic possibility. The sonnet, a popular form in the Baroque era, was celebrated for disrupting clear structures of meaning; for folding and unfolding images through labyrinths of connotation. In the 1590s, English Baroque poet John Donne, a lover and writer of sonnets, wrote The Ecstasy, a Metaphysical poem that celebrates an aesthetic of entanglement or all togetherness. Donne’s poetic language convolutes sense to unravel the ‘subtle knots’ of lovers who abandon themselves to become otherwise: Our souls (which to advance their state / ere gone out) hung “twixt her and me…”

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In Zusammenarbeit mit Galerie Max Hetzler, Berlin | Paris | London | Marfa