David Brown

Represented globally by Goya Contemporary Gallery.

David Brown’s (b. 1971, Frederick, MD) artistic practice revolves around the accumulation and recurrent use of his signature “eye” motif - comprised of two elliptical lines punctuated by a dot inside the center. This motif and modular grid arrangements serve to reference the human figure and broader systems within which individuals operate, not with the aim of achieving perfection, but rather pointing to the negligible fluctuations that occur and humanize the forms. A graduate of the University of Maryland’s Fine Arts program, Brown’s artworks often vary in scale, amassing thousands of meticulously applied marks on individual panels that accumulate and fill space, pushing the expressive potential of serial abstraction to suggest psychological states.

Brown’s work is anything but mass-produced. In contrast, his hand crafted, repeated marks have an organic and visceral feel. Whereas minimalism uses repetition and serial organization to eschew expression in favor of structural organization, Brown embraces repetition to insinuate variation as well as the process of evolution or transformation which may be seen through the small changes that occur as his materials break down, or as his hand and grip physically tire. According to David, his work “differs from traditional Minimalism by trying to create a more personal and organic, yet still orderly image.” Viewing his art as “functional” Brown states that “…during the creation of each piece, through the replication, I gain the opportunity for personal reflection, contemplation, and meditation.”

The artist often uses variants of pattern to create a sense of rhythm. Composed of thousands of recurring marks, Brown emphasizes both the hand quality of each mark, and the unity of purpose shared by each individual component operating together to invent the whole. Where Brown applies each mark separately, responding to the one that came befor

Submitted by Goya Contemporary/Goya-Girl Press