Michael Brown

MARC STRAUS is pleased to present an exhibition of new paintings by Michael Brown. This will be Brown’s fifth solo exhibition with the gallery.

Brown (b. 1982, Poughkeepsie, NY), who was originally trained as a sculptor, became well-known at a very young age for his stainless steel welded ‘cracked mirrors’ and a series of works made with melted vinyl discs. More recently, Brown has turned to highly sculptural paintings, working with gold leaf and oil paint. Now he takes on painting at a smaller scale – 12 x 12-inch square canvases where his soft, pastel driven color palette takes a sharp inward turn. 

These intimate, quieter works hark back to paintings by Agnes Martin, Giorgio Morandi, Etel Adnan, Miyoko Ito, to Shaker drawings and the transcendentalist movement.

Brown has opted for both a limited color palette and reduced forms. His use of soft, predominantly warm hues such as amber, ochre, sun-yellow and muted burnt-orange creates works that compel further study. They are meditative, almost devotional looking objects. 

“I really embrace their domestic scale; I think important things can be found in small gestures.” – says Brown of the new paintings.

Michael Brown lives and works in rural upstate New York. At age twenty he was included in a seminal museum exhibit of 12 US graduate students at Hudson Valley MOCA, Peekskill and quickly inducted into the forefront of the contemporary art scene with exhibitions at David Zwirner, Zwirner and Wirth, and with representation at Yvon Lambert Gallery in Paris and New York. In May 2018 he was included in the first Westchester Art Triennial. His work has been featured in The New York Times, Artforum, Time Out New York, and is in prominent collections around the world including the Beth deWoody Rudin Collection; The Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art in Peekskill, NY; the Rennie Collection in Vancouver, Canada; the Sagamore Hotel Collection, Miami Beach, FL; and the collection of Sherry and Joel Mallin in New York.