La Vida Profunda

James brown

27 November - 31 March

Fundación de Artistas has the honor to present a set of more than fifty selected works of the artist, James Brown (­ Los Angeles, California), grouped under the title “La Vida Profunda" curated by Hilario Galguera.

The unique features of this particular collection surprises and sets it apart from the immense number of exhibitions which Brown has previously had in museums, institutions and galleries in various parts of the world.

It’s composed of paintings from different periods and formats, a bronze sculpture, ceramics and art books produced by the publisher Carpe Diem which Brown shares with his partner Alexandra, providing a broad overview of the creative power that has earned Brown, a prominent and privileged place in the history of contemporary art.

Fully appropriating the space of the house in central Mérida, the curator proposes an emotional journey without any thematic guide through a elegant, formal and conceptual balance explored by Brown in his work.

More than an exhibition of an analysis and knowledge of a particular body of work or framed on a specific topic or a technique such as painting, drawing, watercolor, collage and ceramics, or within a specific period of the artist's work. It is presented, as an emotional journey along the antique architecture of this house trying to replicate the same spiritual and sensitive emotion of the artist in his incessant observation of the universe, to finally encounter the beauty in any of its manifestations. Seeing through his eyes and feeling the same vital pulse.

This journey, as if it were a short Odyssey, aims to reconvert the spaces invaded by the work of Brown created along an intimate journey of spiritual exploration, crossing paradise, hell and universes that replicate the sky illuminating us on nocturnal, nonexistent places like the territory of music, suffering, passion and knowledge of the complex field of abstraction as the highest form of thought in the human spirit.

All of this, specifically manifested in works from different periods, themes and techniques that despite these apparent dissimilarities can discover the pulse of the deep knowledge of life and aesthetics.

Within the intervened space it is observed not only through the gestures and formal characteristics of each of the pieces but also the relation of ideas, shapes, colors, groupings and symbolism that between them create an elegant balance and projection of a dialogue that when both heard or spoken is converted into a whirlwind of amazing mastery, in much the same way as Brown has perceived the world around him.

The purpose is then to introduce the curious spectator in a spiritual journey through the unfathomable cosmos revealed, most of the time, by the explorer James Brown at different levels, depending on the position of the architectural space: a ground level, made of pottery which is constructed from the exquisite land; the brutal weight of bronze flowers, paintings crowning the entrance of light emission, eye levels confronted with consciousness at a height of the solar plexus of us men; highlighting other accidents and visible scars in the same house.

Traveling proximity and distances supported by the echo from one room to another, accents felt in a pause or a place of rest before entering a different emotion as a parallel universe, the step is repeated unconditionally from one painting to another, from one room to another, as evidence of a search through an amazing and long road, and ultimately isolated from the entire creative process. This path of an overwhelming encounter with an emotion of pain, a sense of darkness and love so sublime as the image of Christ’s mother watching him die, like a glimpse into a certainly perceptible and an elegant overall beauty as the element of redemption.