Fluid Allegory - 2007
oil on canvas (26" X 24") (click to see a larger version)
Who put pee-pee in my Coke - 2005-2007
oil on canvas (54" X 66") (click to see a larger version)
private collection
Appaloosa - 2006
oil on linen (36" X 48") (click to see detail)
private collection
Booger Dance - 2006
oil on canvas (24" X 36")
private collection
Broad Daylight - 2006
oil on canvas (24" X 34")
Little Shit - 2006
oil on canvas (12" X 12") (click to see a larger version)
private collection
Blackface - 2005
oil on canvas (30" X 24") (click to see a larger version)
private collection
Booger - 2005
oil on canvas (18" X 24")
private collection
Born To Run - 2005
oil on canvas (24" X 30")
private collection
Buffalo Bill - 2005
oil on canvas (30" X 24")
private collection
Race Horse - 2004
oil on canvas (22" X 30")
private collection
Subject Matter - 2004
oil on canvas (72" X 84")
private collection
Battle of the Indians - 2004/5
oil on canvas (84" X 144") (click to see a larger version)
Untitled (Cow) - 2004
oil on canvas (44" X 58")
private collection
New Friends - 2003
oil on canvas (72" X 60")(click to see a larger version)
What Are You Looking At? - 2003
oil on canvas (20" X 24")
private collection
Man of Science - 2003
oil on canvas (60" X 70")(click to see a larger version)
Lessen - 2003
oil on canvas (72" X 84")
private collection
A Good Chance - 2002
oil on canvas (48" X 60")
Union - 2002
oil on canvas (60" X 72")(click to see a larger version)
Dumb Ass - 2002
oil on canvas (72" X 60")(click to see a larger version)(click to see a larger version)
-
Remembering to Forget: Strategies of Propaganda and Mythology
Charles Browning's solo show at Schroeder Romero
May 15 - June 21, 2008
Opening Reception: Thursday, May 15, 6-8pm
Schroeder Romero
637 West 27th Street - Ground Floor
New York, NY 10001
(212) 630-0722
http://www.schroederromero.com
READ REVIEWS FROM: Benjamin Sutton; Terre Jenkins writing for Donne Tempo
-
Open Studios
Friday, April 25 - 5-9 PM
Saturday, April 26 - 1-6 PM
Sunday, April 27 - 1-6 PM
Charles Browning Studio
87 Richardson Street - 4th floor
Brooklyn, NY 10001
-
CAUCUS
Charles Browning - Jennifer Dalton - Eric Heist - Laurie Hogin
Lou Laurita - Walter Martin & Paloma Muņoz - Laura Parnes
William Powhida - Heidi Schlatter - Michael Waugh - David Wojnarowicz
January 10 - February 16, 2008
Opening Reception: Thursday, January 10, 6-8pm
Schroeder Romero
637 West 27th Street - Ground Floor
New York, NY 10001
(212) 630-0722
http://www.schroederromero.com
-
"Keeping it Real"
Curated by Jerry Kearns
November 15 December 21, 2007
James W. and Lois I. Richmond Center for Visual Arts
Gwen Frostic Shool of Art
Albertine Monroe Brown Gallery
College of Fine Arts
Western Michigan University
1903 W. Michigan Avenue
Kalamazoo, MI 49008
Director of Exhibitions: Don Desmett @ 269-387-2455
-
"Promised Land"
Curated by Elizabeth M. Grady
June 7 - August 4, 2007
Morgan Lehman Gallery, NYC
web: http://www.morganlehmangallery.com
READ REVIEWS FROM: The Village Voice; The New York Times
-
"Story Redefined"
Curated by Ji-Yaang Kim & Sisun Song
April 12 - 28, 2007
POIETIS GALLERY / POET'S DEN ART CENTER, NYC
http://www.poetsden.com
-
"Don't Know Much About History"
Curated by Denise Markonish
November 18, 2006 - January 20, 2007
Artspace, New Haven, CT
http://www.artspacenh.org/
READ REVIEWS FROM: The New York Times; The New Haven Advocate; CT Artscene; CT Central;
About Charles Browning's work:
Everything in nature is lyrical in its ideal essence, tragic in its fate, and comic in its existence. - George Santayana
The past is never dead. It's not even past. - William Faulkner
The paintings of Charles Browning offer a complex interplay of Art and History, humor and brutality, sincerity and irony, narrative and allegory. They present us with a "new" history painting, one that lays claim to a position of authority among the images of the past. Browning's sincerely flat-footed love of an anachronistic form of painting adroitly skewers the propaganda of frontier mythology. Using the associative potential of historical imagery and narrative, the scope of Browning's work expands to implicate us all in the goings on within.
What's your strategy? Blow on west, shooting and drinking, and before you know it, you've conquered a continent. Use it or lose it! "We The People" shall decide who shall be included in "The People." All others will serve or be destroyed, absorbed, or forgotten. We move closer to the self-evident truths and inalienable rights laid out at the founding of the nation by eliminating inconvenient claimants. And they will keep popping up!
What's wrong with this picture? We live in funny times. We live in unfunny times. A confluence of Nationalism and Romanticism in 19th century American painting forms an image of the nation, a cultural foundation for the idea of Manifest Destiny, for Paul Bunyan, Kit Carson, Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett. Distract the people from real dangers with shadow play. Shoot where there are easy targets. Sound familiar? Tell us another story of our great success, a story to explain away the cruel clowns and buffoonish brutes from then 'till now.
Press comments:
From "Fixing What' Aint Broken: Notes on Non Magical Realism" by Douglas Kelley (http://dks.thing.net/)
When Charles Browning paints about 'Politics out of History' he does not mean an ahistorical politics, but a politics that has lost its mooring in History as a grand narrative of progress. he accordingly situates his work within that paradoxical space where modernity and postmodernity -- structured history and posthistoire -- are entangled. Here he identifies a pervasive cultural and political malaise: a residual bad faith whereby we fetishise or mourn the anachronistic forms of a more meaningful history even as we jettison their foundations. His aim is to think through the possibilities that emerge from these ruins of modernity and to resist the dangers of a reactionary, moralising or nostalgic politics that all too readily emerges from anxieties incurred on the threshold of post-modernity. Indeed he strikes a rather recuperative note in his introduction by espousing the hope that history 'may finally come home.'
Foundry notes:
Charles Browning is a long time friend of mine. We have worked together on many projects over the years, including several Yellow Snow Chapbooks and the Mote CD package. Charles created the What are you afraid of? installation with Lynda Gene Rymond, for which I recorded music (these recordings led to the Descent album, which I released under the name The Apiary). Charles and I collaborated again several years later on the A Year and A Day installation (I provided the soundtrack for the video element), for which Charles was the recipient of the Michener Millennium Design Award.
Charles has painted for as long as I've known him and has shown work in various galleries over the years. Charles has been developing a significant body of work, creating paintings more layered and complex every year - it has been exciting to see such growth. You can explore a selection of this work at the left.
The small reproductions here certainly do not do justice to the full sized works (note the actual size below each work), but they will, I think, whet your appetite to attend one of the many shows in which Charles is having his work displayed.
Michael Bentley (1 January 2007)
Here are links to several of Charles' Foundry related projects:
Contact information: 646-283-5316 / email (remove "BEEP" from address before sending)
DUMB ASS APPEARS ON BOOK COVER!
(click to see a larger version)
(click to see a larger version)
Charles' painting Dumb Ass and Booger made cover appearances on A Gringo Like Me and Drink By Noon, two books of poetry by Jennifer Knox. Further information can be found here and at Jennifer's site here.
