Current Exhibit - March
David Brace
(Definitely) Maybe
Work from 2004-2008
I am a painter at heart. However, starting around 1999 I began to explore relief and sculpture. I enjoyed the narrative possibilities offered by industrial materials. Wood, concrete, metal, plaster and spray paint became roads, sidewalks, and man-hole covers. Soon the painted elements in this work (the municipal spray painting you see on streets and sidewalks that indicate water, power, and gas lines) began to hint at mystery stories involving people and urban infrastructure.
This new interest led me to this body of work. Painting on walls is as old as humanity. From the Egyptians, Romans, or the Italian Renaissance to contemporary muralists and taggers, we need to leave our mark. In these pieces I chose to quote famous art works from history and using changes in scale, time, and geography leave evidence of larger, absurd stories.
Take, for instance Renovation. It depicts portions of the back wall of the Sistine Chapel. A fire exit has been installed, but the scale of the door and wall are incongruous. The real fresco is 44 feet high. This contrast has me imagining a Johnathan Swift story involving tiny Florentines needing to house their Gulliver, but of course local fire code requirements must be heeded.
When I was a child my grandparents house was an endless source of amusement and mystery. I did not have a lot of experience with older homes; the coal chute, tiny milk delivery door, and 1940’s appliances were alien to me. And of course Grandma was
immortal. She could have told me that Incan gold was inside those walls and I would have believed it. Five Hundred Years on Myrna Avenue is an exploration of the possibilities of a child’s imagination and the discovery of an alternate reality at work in Grandma’s house.
My goal for these works is that they will spark the same question in the viewer that I had reading Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Phillip K. Dick, or Arkady and Boris Strugatsky (whose novel Definitely Maybe inspired the title of this exhibition); what if?
Coming in April - Portraits of Sound
