GLENN BROWN

“Come To Dust”
Gagosian, London

What the Gallery Says: “For Brown, one of Britain’s most renowned contemporary artists, the past and present are treasuries of raw material, offering countless images, titles, and techniques to be combined, appropriated, and deconstructed. Mining an extensive knowledge of art history, as well as of literature, music, and popular culture, Brown creates complex and sensuous works of art that are resolutely of our time.

The title of exhibition, taken from a song in Shakespeare’s play Cymbeline, evokes the ineluctability of death. The exhibition, comprising oil paintings, drawings in period frames, grisaille panel works, etchings, and sculptures, attests to the ever-intensifying dexterity with which Brown employs paint, content, and form. It teems with contrasts and contradictions, collapsing time, and allowing different, often opposing, references to exist simultaneously.”

Why It’s Worth a Look: Brown is a jack of all trades and a master of different media. The breadth of his artistic talent comes to the fore in his latest body of work, as well as his wide frame of reference, as his work gestures towards art history, poetry, and even song lyrics. “Let’s Make Love and Listen to Death From Above,” anyone?

What It Looks Like:

Glenn Brown, “Come to Dust” Gagosian Gallery, Grosvenor Hill, Jan 2017.

Glenn Brown, Come to Dust (2017). © Glenn Brown. Courtesy of the artist and Gagosian. Photo: Lucy Dawkins.

Glenn Brown They Slipped the Surly Bounds of Earth and Touched the Face of God (2017). © Glenn Brown. Courtesy of the artist and Gagosian.
Photo: Lucy Dawkins.

Glenn Brown, Let’s Make Love and Listen to Death from Above (2017). © Glenn Brown. Courtesy of the artist and Gagosian. Photo: Mike Bruce.

Glenn Brown, Passchendaele (2017). © Glenn Brown. Courtesy of the artist and Gagosian. Photo: Mike Bruce.

Glenn Brown, Children of the Revolution (2017). © Glenn Brown. Courtesy of the artist and Gagosian. Photo: Mike Bruce.

Glenn Brown, Drawing 16 (after van Noordt) (2017). © Glenn Brown. Courtesy of the artist and Gagosian. Photo: Edgar Laguinia.

Glenn Brown, Harpoon (2018). © Glenn Brown. Courtesy of the artist and Gagosian. Photo: Mike Bruce.

Glenn Brown, The Music of the Mountains (2016). © Glenn Brown. Courtesy of the artist and Gagosian. Photo: Mike Bruce.

Glenn Brown, Let me ferry you out to sea To see who you could have been When the time comes to row back in You’ll be in the place you should have been (2017). © Glenn Brown. Courtesy of the artist and Gagosian. Photo: Mike Bruce.

Glenn Brown, Let me ferry you out to sea To see who you could have been When the time comes to row back in You’ll be in the place you should have been (2017). © Glenn Brown. Courtesy of the artist and Gagosian. Photo: Mike Bruce.

Glenn Brown, Sepulchre Garden (2018). © Glenn Brown. Courtesy of the artist and Gagosian. Photo: Mike Bruce.

Glenn Brown, American Sublime (2017). © Glenn Brown. Courtesy of the artist and Gagosian. Photo: Mike Bruce.

Glenn Brown, American Sublime detail (2017). © Glenn Brown. Courtesy of the artist and Gagosian. Photo: Mike Bruce.

Glenn Brown, No One I’d Rather Be (2016). © Glenn Brown. Courtesy of the artist and Gagosian.
Photo: Mike Bruce.

“Glenn Brown: Come to Dust”
Installation view at Gagosian Grosvenor Hill, London
Artworks © Glenn Brown. Photo by Lucy Dawkins

“Glenn Brown: Come to Dust” is on view through March 17, 2018. 

Gagosian is located at 20 Grosvenor Hill, London.

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