It takes courage for an artist to leave a powerful, multi-national gallery like Gagosian, particularly after 15 years during which your star has risen from a talented 29-year-old unknown to an established name.
But, the British painter Cecily Brown has done just that, departing Gagosian in April last year to join the smaller but respected London gallery Thomas Dane last summer. On 10 June, the gallery opened their first show of Brown’s paintings and drawings, 'Cecily Brown: Madrepora'. Brown has lived and worked in New York since she moved there as a 26-year-old, a devoted painter escaping the conceptual focus of London’s YBA’s in the mid-1990s.
Although still happily settled in Manhattan, as she smiles proudly around the gallery as final touches are applied the day before the opening, it's hard not to see that this is a homecoming show.
Brown clearly revels in the sheer handling of paint and, through its many, reworked layers, has a restless virility. The body remains central and fleshy forms slowly reveal themselves out of the many layers. There’s a strong sense of narrative too, although the precise subject often remains elusive, more a memory of her original inspiration.
The show takes over both of the gallery’s spaces on Duke Street, each room mixing recent works with older paintings and drawings from the past two decades, kept by the artist. As gallery director François Chantala observes, although Brown’s work is 'constantly shifting,' the layers becoming 'more translucent and the palette more muted' in recent paintings. They’re united by a handful of recurrent themes such as the body, heaven and hell, and draw repeatedly on art historical references. Brown’s admiration of Rembrandt, of French 18th-century painters and Velázquez and Goya, to name a few, touches many.
It’s a rare treat to see Brown’s drawings hung alongside the paintings. These deft delicate ink sketches, often studies of Old Master paintings, are rarely shown and, far from playing second fiddle to the paintings, they’re one of the highlights of the show. Brown’s skill as a draughtsman is about to gain further recognition with a solo exhibition titled 'Rehearsal' opening this October at New York’s Drawing Center.
With the move to Thomas Dane, Brown has spoken of her wish to 'recontextualise' her work as she enters another stage of her career and the intimacy of the two spaces, the collaborative process of putting together the exhibition, does just that.
To this day, her preoccupation remains the Body—in all its various guises and narratives: as subject matter, as form, as boundary, but also as quintessence, as core structure and even as a total Corpus. Pictured: 'Madrepora', installation view at Thomas Dane Gallery, London, 2016. Courtesy the artist and Thomas Dane Gallery, London
Spanning both spaces of the gallery, the exhibition will also include works from the past, some of which were kept by the artist
INFORMATION
’Cecily Brown: Madrepora’ will be view until 23 July at Thomas Dane Gallery in London. For more information visit the Thomas Dane website
ADDRESS
Thomas Dane Gallery, 3 & 11 Duke Street St James's, London SW1Y 6BN
-
The Park: step inside Jeremy King's mid-century dinerOne of several 2024 openings from restauranteur, Jeremy King, food critic Ben McCormack books in at The Park
-
Six brilliant bars for your 2025 celebrations, hot off the Wallpaper* travel deskWallpaper’s most-read bar reviews of the year can't be wrong: here’s inspiration for your festive and new year plans, from a swanky Las Vegas lounge to a minimalist London drinking den
-
Misfires and Monstrosities: three vehicular design disasters that show taste is in retreatFrom a multi-million dollar piece merchandise to a wretched Rolls-Royce, these are the low points of the year in transportation design
-
Inside the distorted world of artist George RouyFrequently drawing comparisons with Francis Bacon, painter George Rouy is gaining peer points for his use of classic techniques to distort the human form
-
Love, melancholy and domesticity: Anna Calleja is a painter to watchAnna Calleja explores everyday themes in her exhibition, ‘One Fine Day in the Middle of the Night’, at Sim Smith, London
-
Henni Alftan’s paintings frame everyday moments in cinematic renditionsConcurrent exhibitions in New York and Shanghai celebrate the mesmerising mystery in Henni Alftan’s paintings
-
Inside Jack Whitten’s contribution to American contemporary artAs Jack Whitten exhibition ‘Speedchaser’ opens at Hauser & Wirth, London, and before a major retrospective at MoMA opens next year, we explore the American artist's impact
-
‘This blood that is flowing is my blood, and that should be a positive thing’: Tracey Emin at White CubeTracey Emin’s exhibition ‘I followed you to the end’ has opened at White Cube Bermondsey in London, and traces the artist’s journey through loss
-
Harlem-born artist Tschabalala Self’s colourful ode to the landscape of her childhoodTschabalala Self’s new show at Finland's Espoo Museum of Modern Art evokes memories of her upbringing, in vibrant multi-dimensional vignettes
-
Artist Peggy Kuiper’s impactful figurative works explore her memories and emotional landscape with striking visual intensityPeggy Kuiper presents ‘The Conversation That Never Took Place’ at Reflex in Amsterdam, featuring over 25 new works (until 13 July)
-
Don’t miss: Hayv Kahraman intertwines colonialism and botany in LondonArtist Hayv Kahraman draws parallels between colonial botany and her experiences as an Iraqi refugee transplanted into Europe, at Pilar Corrias in London
