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Roger Brown: Virtual Still Lifes
Born in Hamilton, Alabama, in 1941, Roger Brown (nee James Roger Brown, d. 1997) was an American artist known for his atmospheric paintings of architecture, landscapes, and stylized social dramas. He conceived of an American "ambiance" influenced by the visual language of postwar advertising, frequent road trips, and film noir. His practice investigated the tension between illusionistic and "real" space, aestheticizing the national mood as one of artificiality and theatricality.
Throughout his life, Brown was a voracious collector; he amassed hundreds of thrift store and yard sale finds, from vernacular ceramics and kitsch objects to exceptional works of folk and visionary art, which he meticulously arranged and displayed in his studio and homes. His virtual still-life paintings eventually became a studio expression of his collecting and curating of found objects, moving from the tableaux he created in his surroundings to discrete works of art that married his passion for collecting with his groundbreaking approach to painting. To create the twenty-seven works in the "Virtual Still Life" series, Brown selected from nearly five hundred objects, primarily ceramic, and curated distinct arrangements on display shelves that extended from the frames of his moody land and skyscapes. In these "virtual" still lifes, the concrete and the pictorial blur to enshrine and celebrate real experience.
In addition to examples from this last, important series, Roger Brown: Virtual Still Lifes presents early paintings that set the stage for the artist's dramatic landscapes made midcareer; painted objects that unite his collecting with his studio work; and curated arrangements from his live-work homes in La Conchita, California, and Chicago, Illinois. As such, it examines how collecting practices and theatrical concepts permeated and shaped Brown's artistic process, culminating in the "Virtual Still Life" series. |