PRESS RELEASE
Eugene Brodsky, New Works
Apr 2 – May 9, 2009
Eugene Brodsky
April 2, 2009 – May 9, 2009
Opening Reception: April 2, 2009. 5-7 PM
Sears-Peyton Gallery is pleased to present its fourth solo exhibition of works by New York artist Eugene Brodsky.
After marrying his German wife, Brodsky began spending a few months a year traveling to Europe to visit friends and family. He is not fond of travel. A reluctant sightseer who is easily bored, Brodsky skips the prescribed “sights” and focuses instead on the edges of things; pointing his camera at a bit of graffiti on a wall in Barcelona, the marks on an old door in Berlin, and an abandoned shopping cart in Hamburg. All of the throw- away images of urban life become his subjects. What matters to Brodsky is that the images be compelling enough to command his sustained attention. He refers to his chosen subjects as “affecting icons”. They are everyday images that resonate as both mysterious and familiar. His trips abroad have become scouting missions, where he seeks out the visual equivalent of background noise for each place he visits and uses his snapshots as source material.
Brodsky, whose mother was a painter, grew up in New York City in a household where art was in the foreground. The heroes of his childhood were Franz Kline and Willem De Kooning, but he has no formal art education. (He majored in political Studies at George Washington University and then went to the New York Studio School for about 10 days). So he is like a very sophisticated outsider who has come up with all kinds of unique ways to make marks. Mr. Brodsky’s art has been described as a dialogue between painting and drawing and image transfer.
Brodsky’s working process is to begin with an image or a simple configuration of marks and put it through a complex series of manipulations, which he refers to as a “weird machine” of his own devising. Steps in the process can include: drawing from life, photography, tracing, cutting, reversing, inverting, scanning, blowing up, cropping, tearing, cutting, stenciling, pulling ink across the surface with a paint paddle, silk screening, and transferring. The resulting quality of mark and surface is completely distinctive and unique to Brodsky.
Eugene Brodsky’s work is in numerous public collections including the Baltimore Museum of Art, The National Gallery, and The Metropolitan Museum of Art. He has received fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, The National Endowment for the Arts and the New York Foundation for the Arts.
About Sears-Peyton Gallery
Founded in 1999 by Macie Sears and Gaines Peyton, Sears-Peyton Gallery is located in Manhattan’s Chelsea art district and represents the work of contemporary American Artists. With emphasis on process-driven exploration, improvisation, and rigorous craft, Sears-Peyton’s artists are committed to producing earnest and contemplative works of art. While the gallery’s artist’s work in a wide variety of media and subject matters, the common thread that unites this diverse stable of talent is a grounding in historic styles and subjects, rendered contemporary and seductive through modern processes, interpretations, moods and techniques. The resulting work feels simultaneously timeless and timely.
The gallery is committed to the long term development of their artists; placing works in public and private collections as well as acting as an accessible public space in which works are exhibited and become part of the cultural dialogue.