“The fantastical landscapes, dramas and illusionistic diversions created by Auckland artist James Brown lead the viewer down many weird and wonderful paths. Brown’s juxtapositions of the real, the imagined, the sublime and the visceral bring together things usually only seen in the heightened world of the graphic novel. But these are paintings, bright, luscious, oils and enamels, unexplainable, driven by the imagination, formed by intuition, individualised by skill.
The paintings in this first show are rich and explosively fanciful explorations of the worlds beyond us, behind us and beside us. From the burning red skies of apocalyptic beginnings, to the space suited frontiers of the future, the past and the imagined collapsing, rearranging and reforming before our eyes on our computers and on our movie screens.
The worlds of wonder we become a part of are in the end celebrations of image making as much theatres of the ritual madness and ecstasy worthy of the Dionysus Greek god of wine and the ultimate patron of drama whom we pay homage to in these paintings”.
Above: The Birth of Tragedy, acrylic on plyboard 100 x 240 cm
All images courtesy of OREXART and the Artist
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