CHRISTOPHER BROWN
Building, Birds and Box Cars
March 2 – April 1, 2006
John Berggruen Gallery is pleased to present the exhibition of new paintings by Christopher Brown. The reception for the artist will be on Thursday, March 2 from 5:30-7:30pm.
In this new series of large-scale paintings, Brown makes use of a broad range of images from buildings to birds, trains and even self-portraits to explore ideas about nature, culture, and the meeting of the two. Brown's new work uses both pattern and the repetitive use of simple shapes to forge a visual relationship between representation and abstraction. The painting Birding by Ear depicts the artist listening to bird calls in a log cabin, eyes closed, surrounded by vinyl records and Audubon-like bird charts. All of the imagery in Brown's work is rooted in the artist's personal experience, whether living in New York City, birding in the Berkeley Hills, or reading about the American West as a boy. For that reason, the content ranges from the archetypal scenes (cowboys and trains) to the most personal (self-portraits). With his latest oeuvre, Brown has thus created a wide-ranging portrait of himself that is both literal and metaphorical, and which describes his exploration of the relationship between nature and culture.
Born in Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, Christopher Brown received his B.F.A at the University of Illinois and his M.F.A at the University of California, Davis. His work is represented in several museum collections including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, and the Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery. Brown is currently living and working in Berkeley, California.
