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Email PageDaniel Brush: 30 Year's Work
May 30, 2007- June 30, 2007
Reception: May 30, 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm
Daniel Brush
Phillips, de Pury & Company
450 W 15th StOn the wall, or on the table, or emerging from their boxes like bodies out of coffins, DB’s book-like blocks seem the product of an enterprise as stubborn and deranged as Blake’s, or the man in Borges who was determined upon writing Don Quixote word for word. Yet, when you stop to look, when you see one on the wall, the time and attention, which has been poured into them, arrests time. The work has the power of stopping us in our tracks. Through the artist’s quietist fanaticism his industrial medium has become numinous. Like the early portrait photographs which due to the length of their exposure, seem to condense time, these images speak volumes. Their density condenses hours, days, weeks of the craftsman’s unrelenting attention. As a result they emanate a sense of presence. Hugh Haughton New York/York 2007
Over the course of thirty years, working in virtual seclusion from the mainstream, Daniel Brush has created an unparalleled body of work which includes painting, sculpture and objects.
From his first individual painting exhibition at the Phillips’ Collection in Washington, D.C. at age 26, Brush’s career includes international painting exhibitions, a fifteen – year period of removal and study, and an intense immersion into the mysteries of gold. His large-scale canvases and drawings, inspired by the expressive, disciplined gestures of the Noh theater, integrate the artist’s deep understanding of Asian thought with the removed drama in modernist painting. The wall pieces in blue steel and pure gold engage the ambient light. The table pieces, hand–engraved with thousands of rhythmic lines, are visual poems that record the breathing of time.
Brush has been termed obsessively reclusive, yet his work is coveted by a number of the most important collectors in the world who have made the journey into his very private world. Brush has had seven one – person museum exhibitions, including a retrospective at the Smithsonian Institution and a recent exhibition at the Lannan Foundation.
Daniel Brush has developed a rigorous personal aesthetic marked by its intellectual force, mastery of techniques and the science of materials. He has combined the ongoing study of history, philosophy, and science with meditation and an ordered daily practice. His idiosyncratic and contemplative work marks a journey of evolving clarity and a deeply expressive voice in contemporary art.
‘Brush is a Prometheus, stealing lightning from the gods to make objects as miraculous as they are.’ Donald Kuspit 1998
‘A creative person knows that what he or she calls work is nothing of the sort. It is a process of life. So, to understand what Daniel Brush does, it helps to consider the whole of his existence: his dedication bordering on obsession, his rituals and routines; his stimulations—reading Zen to do sculpture, sweeping the floor to find a mood, eating the same meal every day for twenty years to find comfort, seeking solitude to find enlightenment. That way, knowing the obliqueness of the artist’s life, and even his apparent dysfunction, it is possible to approach an understanding of what the word creation means. Paul Theroux 1998
Steidl, in partnership with Phillips de Pury & Company will publish a four-volume book to accompany the exhibition.
Reviews of Daniel Brush: 30 Year's Work
| New York Times June 22, 2007 | Bridget L. Goodbody | "Like the Japanese Noh theater of which he’s enamored, Daniel Brush’s paintings and sculptures suggest a slow, understated dance. His jewelry, on the other hand, captures character pared down to an essence. Mr. Brush first came to prominence in the 1970s, when many Conceptually minded Minimalists embraced Eastern spiritual practices. What makes him unique, perhaps, is the obsession with which he plies his trade...." |
Books and DVDs related to artists in this show
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Phillips, de Pury & Company was last updated: 2008-11-22
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