Corey Brown
Corey Brown (Groveland, MA) is a painter and digital media collage artist who contextualizes our contemporary social upheaval by making note of its whimsical yet exhaustive nature. Approaching collage in our digital age has allowed Brown to utilize traditional collage concepts that are translated through digital based programs. Primarily using photoshop as the medium of choice, Brown compiles together sometimes hundreds of images that bring change into the forefront of the work. Taking form as figuration, the bodies that are present in Brown’s works are in moments of transfiguration, continuously morphing and mending into unknown forms and recognizable motifs. Take the work, Flower, for example; we see a cacophony of melding forms that have been accessed from a vast image network of limbs, facial features, bodies and historical art references. The most recognizable moment is the pistil of the flower, a face that looks to reference a Madonna and child. A nose fragment then becomes the pedals with singular eyes that become the stamen. It is clear that Brown grounds his work in deep historical art contexts pulling inspirations from a Rubens here, a Grüenwald there, and Carravagio to top it off. No wonder then, when we see Brown’s work, we associate his imagery with religion and mythology which is imbued with whimsical narrative. At any moment you may be looking at a virgin mary, a centaur, a contemporary sports figure, or revealing the pathos of militaristic battle. Though Frakensteinian in nature, Brown’s work does not read as grotesque, instead separate images coalesce into a singular works of hope, made up from the different histories, voices and narratives of digitally found and altered photographs. In Conversation with Corey Brown: “Conflict is the backbone of the present moment. ”
Corey Brown, we would like to welcome you to Easthaus and thank you for your submission to our exhibition, Grassroots. It's wonderful to have you on board to complete an online interview with us here. Without wasting any time, let's get started!
Easthaus:
Corey Brown:
We are no spokesperson for Portland but we agree it’s a treat! First, if you would be so generous, would you like to give us a glimpse into your life and practice as an artist? I think it would be great to hear you speak on your creative practice a little. Your work is very clearly referencing mythologies but how does your work come to fruition? How would you describe your time in the studio or during your deepdive on internet images? What is a successful day for you? How do you approach a new project or artwork? Where do you start? Where do you know when to end?
EH:
Yeah I’m very excited for this exhibition! It’s wonderful to have my work up in Portland, it's a beautiful city.
Throughout my life I find my creative availability comes through discipline. Growing up I was a competitive dancer for many years. By the time I was in middle school I would be in the studio, mostly tap dancing, six days a week. This culminated in competing at the 2013 Tap Dance World Championships in Riesa, Germany. I think I feel best when I’m busy, but not overwhelmed.
Finding structures and routines that function well also allow me to flourish. Currently I work a day job as substitute teacher at Newburyport High School and to supplement I also tap dance professionally through a group named DrumatiX. In the evenings, 2.5 hours a day, four days a week, I work on my studio practice. Then I find doing things that have nothing to do with productivity best to unwind. Right now I’ve been playing Dragon Quest XI on my Xbox which has been really wonderful. I also spend weekends with my incredible partner Caoin O’Durgy, who is a fantastic illustrator & muralist. Sometimes we’ll make art together, but most of the time we’ll enjoy the Boston area, spend time with friends, etc.
In terms of actually making my work, day to day it's a lot of problem solving. Using ten or twenty different source photos per figure and making them into one coherent creature takes a lot of trial and error. Placing an arm, moving it, turning it, adding a new section, forming it to hold an object…. There’s a lot of coming back to sections I don't like until everything clicks. It’s interesting because my work is inherently process oriented, but I also always know when it's done. I also work very methodically. Most images, outside of small works, take about six weeks of chipping away. Because of this I have luckily never dealt with any sort of artist block. By the time I finish one project, two or three other ideas have already come and gone. I just pick what’s most exciting at the moment I’m ready to start something new and go for it. If a project takes more than two months, I’ll get antsy to start something new. Then I’ll leave the old project half baked for a while. Most of the time I’ll come back to finish it up.
CB:
I am not sure how far along in your art journey you were but now knowing your time in Germany; that must have unlocked a lot for you? One cannot overlook the similarities collage artists hold in their practice, taking the material drudgery we have in our immediate life and making works out of that matter. Hannah Höch and other 1920s Berlin Club Dada artists come to mind and are certainly of interest to you. Unlike artists of the 1920s though, what is at your fingertips is a wide net that can be cast — well, on the .net — how does the internet open up your practice? Does it change how you make physical collages and vice versa? Additionally to Dada and New Objectivity movements, I would be curious who else is in your artistic family tree historically and who do you consider as your current contemporary colleagues? Who do you find yourself in dialogue with?
EH:
I find that photoshop & the internet changes everything in terms of collage. Through my laptop there’s a much greater capability to stretch, pull, flip, etc. in a way that could never be possible through physical paper. I can make limbs change direction just as easily as I can change its color. Not to mention once you get a handle on Photoshop’s steep learning curve the process of collaging becomes much faster. With physical collage you’re at the whim of your source material, whereas on Photoshop it's the other way around. If I’m missing the perfect piece I can easily find it online. I can also just take a new photo myself for that matter. I think at this point it would be difficult for me to return to physical collaging since the limitations are so much greater.
In terms of artistic inspirations Hannah Höch is someone I deeply admire. While studying abroad in Berlin for 6 months in 2022 her work was presented at three separate exhibitions I visited, including a solo show at the Bröhan Museum in Charlottenburg. Her work was really the kindling for my current series, which I started later that year. Her piece “Flucht” from 1931 is probably my favorite. It’s inherently process oriented, but not also not bogged down by traditional technique. I remember the moment I had the original idea for my work while walking to the subway that July. “What if I collaged like Hannah Höch on Photoshop and worked up to large, dramatic scenes like those of the Rubens paintings at Munich’s Alte Pinakothek?” That process is one I am still in, but every year I inch closer to that goal. In terms of contemporary colleagues, I’m a big fan of Steven Balkenhol & Taewon Ahn for example, but most of my inspirations come from dead European painters. Rubens, van Dyck, Michelangelo, Carravagio, and Grünewald in terms of the old masters. Also German/Austrian modernists like Max Beckmann, Oskar Kokoschka, Christian Schad, Otto Dix, Lovis Corinth, & Hannah Höch of course.
CB:
EH:
It is interesting to hear your embrace of the digital where often artists hold the opposite sentiment in the digital vs. analog debate! Switching gears a little though, I think as artists we all have different views about what it means to be an artist and to hold a creative practice. In our contemporary moment, it seemingly seems even more important now to be a creative person. Would you mind telling us what your overall philosophy about art is? What keeps bringing you back to the studio? What do you feel is your role as an artist in this greater societal grassroot movement we are living though?
I think for me being an artist is all about conversation. I’m going to museums, galleries, cinemas, video games stores, restaurants even, and figuring out what I like or dislike in order to knead that into my practice. To a certain extent this is how I make my work legible. It brings a certain level of flatness, angst, & playfulness - all of which I hope my audience reads as runoff from my time in Berlin. I think the way I meld source images nods to how much overstimulation exists in a reality intertwined with the internet. Art making has become a way to converse with those who inspire me. I also hope to catalog the contemporary. I’m paying respect to the people I admire, taking note of the culture I am currently experiencing, and putting something out there to cement a more abstracted slice of the present moment. Maybe one day someone will look at my work and use it to reflect on their experiences in 2125, for example.
CB:
I wonder what a 2125 collage work of art will look like. As you have alluded to, as a collagist you are taking the material of our present, assessing, and reconfiguring the bits and pieces you choose worthy to make something anew, often resulting in distorted figures. This of course allows you to open up a societal critique that is also tied to the art movements we spoke about earlier. What stands out though is the distortion aspect of your figures which seem to be an important part of your work. The body becomes animal, becomes vegetation, becomes body again; always undergoing transfiguration. What does distortion, collage, and figures offer to the viewer when thinking about grassroot movements? What other ways do you feel your work approaches this topic?
EH:
The hope with my practice is to follow in the footsteps of European scenic painting in a way that speaks to current day intuitions. Everyday we scroll on social media and are inundated with images. It’s all generally overstimulating to me. If I wasn't an artist and needed to promote my work online, I’d probably try my best to completely disengage. Honestly I’d avoid having the internet in my home entirely, and go to a library instead when I need to connect. However, If one of the main values of art comes through acting as a historical bookmark for society's ever changing tastes, then Photoshop allows me to channel the 21st century into that recipe. That is also one of the reasons why I’m particularly drawn to digital collage rather than physical. It allows me to experiment with a medium that wasn’t available until personal computers hit the market. The digital nature of my work inherently becomes my greatest challenge. I need Photoshop to create that abstracted flavor I crave. But it's also very easy for me to get distracted. I find myself procrastinating a lot, especially when my routines aren’t set in stone. That’s why again and again I find myself wanting to paint. With traditional mediums I have no choice but to disconnect from technology. Physically seeing progress day to day also helps my motivation last throughout longer projects too. Maybe it's just the human condition these days. The computer helps me make collages quickly, with more capabilities, and with the pulse of the present moment. In return I constantly have to beat back the addictions that come with it. If only blocking websites actually worked, haha. I think this conflict is the backbone of the present moment.
CB:
Conflict could be a contender the word of the year for both the good conflicts grassroots movements bring but also in respect for all the tumult we continue to see. On a lighter note, I find it always interesting to see what artists have pinned up on their walls; deadlines, to-do lists, art inspiration/mood boards, ect. It says a lot about how the artist's mind works and how they connect the dots and how it all feeds into the work. Do you have any images from the studio you would like to share with us? What do you have up on your walls currently?
EH:
My studio space is mostly practical if anything. Mostly it's storage of paintings waiting to be put back on exhibit, super early works from when I started my studio practice, plus a couple half-finished pieces to be continued later this year. I’ve never really been a huge fan of mood boards, but since I’m working with collage most of the images that would be put up as inspiration become my direct source material anyways. The space is set up in three sections each designed for the different mediums I practice: the wall for painting, the desk for digital work, and the back corner for screen printing. Screen printing has been an interesting challenge in my studio since the process can be finicky. If burning a screen doesn’t work, there can be a lot of trial and error to find the solution. Right now I’ve been focused on small works, so the set up is geared specifically to 11x14 inch stretched mesh. The halogen work lamp has the protective glass taken off and is duct taped at a certain height to provide UV radiation evenly across the emulsion. Then I take the screen outside after burning to wash it off with a garden hose. This stops the chemical reaction and allows the image to shine through. Once that is dry then I can pull test prints by attaching the screen to hinges bolted to my desk.
When painting I’ll screw the stretched canvas into the wall so it can’t wiggle around. My painting palette used to be a window I believe. The more I paint, the more leftovers build up on it. In college I cut myself bad trying to clean my palette at the end of senior year, so instead i’ve just left the paint to grow into mountains over time. Next to my desk I also keep the mannequin I bought while studying in Berlin. Her previous owner, a British filmmaker living in Friedrichshain, named her Ivanka which I kept for continuity’s sake. For a while in 2022 and 2023 she was my muse for everything I ever created, including my podcast where she played the silent teaching assistant for the main character. Nowadays I’ll include her in something every couple of months. I’ve worked with her so much at this point that it's a nice challenge to keep reinventing upon the same prompt in order to keep things interesting.
CB:
EH:
We must slate in Ivanka from Friedrichshain for a future exhibition haha! Corey, thank you for your time contributing to the conversation for the exhibition, Grassroots, which is on view until February 28th here at Easthaus. For a closing dialogue on this interview we welcome you to plug any ongoing projects, events, upcoming thoughts, inspirational quotes; anything that you would like to share with the Easthaus and greater art community we are fostering.
Thank you for having me, I really appreciate the opportunity!
In December of last year I finished editing an improv comedy podcast I recorded while in university. It's called Buttercups & Moonbeams and is available anywhere podcasts are heard. Season 2 features 12 half-hour episodes revolving around Mr. Johnson, a defunct FBI agent starting a new life as an art professor. If you’re interested in comedy or the proliferation of abstract expressionism in the United States, I think it’s worth a listen.
For my art practice, I’m currently working on some screen printing, digital collages, and paintings that will be ready to show in the coming months. I’m hoping to work on some larger pieces later this year. Starting this spring I’ll also be tabling at art markets with The Goodboy Collective. On sale I’ll have various prints, candles, fabric goods, and jigsaw puzzles.
CB:
Hannah Höch, FLUCHT (Flight), 1931, photomontage, 9” x 7.25”, Collection of IFA, Stuttgart.