Artist Statement
My paintings explore the intersection of technology and language, and its effects on communication and meaning. Since so much of daily life happens on screen, I celebrate what is lost: material presence and the handmade mark, alternatives with the power to restore our attention and bring us joy. I gather text from online life (news, advertising, social media), and reinscribe it with a human touch through bright, hand-painted lettering and vivid pattern. With layered paint, collage and “trompe l’oeil” effects, large projects have taken the form of an oversized greeting card, a notebook, a game board, lists and other objects and functions replaced by digital substitutes. My smaller compositions often resemble screen layouts, with painterly irregularities that act as visual interference, disrupting the routines of online life. Others combine short words and phrases with bright color and improvisational abstraction, countering the control of the attention economy with the freedom and openness of imagination.
Bio
Becky Brown was born in Manhattan and lives in Buffalo, NY. She received her MFA from Hunter College and is an Assistant Professor at SUNY University at Buffalo. Solo and two-person exhibitions include PS122 Gallery (NYC), Arts+Leisure Gallery (NYC), the Handwerker Gallery (Ithaca, NY), Raft of Sanity (Buffalo, NY) and Fort Gondo (St. Louis, MO). Group exhibitions include The Drawing Center, Queens Museum, Freight+Volume Gallery, Pratt Manhattan Gallery and A.I.R. Gallery (all NYC); Last Projects (Los Angeles); Buffalo Institute of Contemporary Art and Hallwalls (Buffalo, NY) and Religare Arts Initiative (Delhi, India). She has been an artist-in-residence at MacDowell, Yaddo, Millay, Edward Albee and Saltonstall Foundations, among others. Her installation “No, said the Fruit Bowl,” in the kitchen of an abandoned home on Governors Island, was described in the New York Times as “machines vomiting as if in a bulimic’s nightmare.” She has received grant funding from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts and Bronx Council on the Arts. Her work has been written about in the New York Times, the New York Observer, Hyperallergic, Two Coats of Paint and Art Spiel, among others. Her critical writing has been published in Art in America and The Brooklyn Rail.
Press and Catalogue Essays
- “Echoes of Jensen: Pratt’s ‘The Apex Is Nothing’ Asks Us to Engage Beyond Conditioned Responses,” by Stephen Wozniak, New York Observer, 2024
- “The Apex is Nothing,” The New Social Environment #1067, The Brooklyn Rail, 2024
- Silent Disco: Technology and Isolation – Artist Becky Brown; What’s My Thesis with Javier Proenza, podcast, 2024
- Art Problems with Paddy Johnson, podcast, Episode 58, 2024
- “Les Gommes: Becky Brown and Annette Cords at PS122,” by Axel Bishop, Two Coats of Paint, 2021
- “Dream-Restart-Experience: Annette Cords and Becky Brown In Conversation,” Art Spiel, 2021
- “Dwelling in Ambivalence: Pungent Dystopia at Freight+Volume,” NYC, by Ben Tripp, Whitehot Magazine, 2020
- Artwork “Search” featured alongside book review “Tech, Please!” Bookforum, 2020
- Image of the Day, Elephant Magazine, 2018
- Daily Trumpet, Instagram Project by Jonathan Horowitz, 2018
- “The System Is Down,” Catalogue accompanying exhibition, published by Freight+Volume Gallery, including an interview with Art Historian Cary Levine and poems by Kristina Martino
- Featured Listing: The System Is Down, artcritical.com, 2018
- “Cognition-Stroll” Publication; Annette Cords and Becky Brown; Essay by Tatiana Istomina
- Excess Baggage: Interview with Chennie Huang, CH Reviews, 2017
- Cognition-Stroll: Annette Cords and Becky Brown, by Jonathan Goodman, Arte Fuse, 2017
- Becky Brown, Annette Cords, and Accidental Poetry, Two Coats of Paint, 2017
- Portal – An Art Show at the Federal Hall National Memorial, by Karin Bravin, Site Specific
- Becky Brown at Fink and Theel Contemporary
- I am Trying Not to Skim
- Gems Among the Ruins: Governors Island Art Fair by Ken Johnson, New York Times
- Metaphysics of the Kitchen, by Tatiana Istomina
- Overlapping Codes: Becky Brown and Annette Cords Studio Visit, by David Anaya Maya, The Bottom Line, The Drawing Center
- Art, a Balm After the Storm; Come Together: Surviving Sandy by Roberta Smith, New York Times
- Becky Brown by Paola Cabal for The Transforming State (Delhi, India)
- Influx of Information by Chennie Huang
- Becky Brown by Emily Schlemowitz for Hunter College MFA Thesis
Art Criticism by Becky Brown
- Everything Looks Distorted Already: Joan Linder Interviewed by Becky Brown; Cornelia Magazine
- Matt Bollinger by Becky Brown, Art in America
- Karl Wirsum by Becky Brown, Art in America
- The Memphis Group by Becky Brown, Art in America
- Mike Cloud by Becky Brown, Art in America
- A Critics’ Roundtable on “The Forever Now” at MoMA, with Carrie Moyer, Raphael Rubinstein, Jason Stopa and Dennis Kardon, artcritical.com
- Michael Bauer by Becky Brown, Art in America
- Camille Henrot by Becky Brown, The Brooklyn Rail
- Not on the High Line: Scenes from Thomas Hirschhorn’s Gramsci Monument; artcritical.com
- Dieter Roth by Becky Brown, The Brooklyn Rail
- Emily Noelle Lambert by Becky Brown, The Brooklyn Rail
- Klara Liden by Becky Brown, The Brooklyn Rail
- Mark Bradford by Becky Brown, The Brooklyn Rail
- Your Gold Teeth II (group show) by Becky Brown, The Brooklyn Rail
- Marie Sivak and Barbara Hatfield, by Becky Brown, The Brooklyn Rail
- Chris Domenick and Anne Pearce, by Becky Brown, The Brooklyn Rail
- Franz West by Becky Brown, artcritical.com