Friday, February 23, 2018

Review: Brian Alfred " Future Shock" at Miles McEnery Gallery

The first piece of the exhibition is called “Enclaves of the Future.” I feel a lot uninteresting at my first impression of this work alone, but it does make sense if we associate this one with the exhibition title and rest of the works. This painting as the opening, it aggressively put the viewers in the dark side. In this way, when we stand in front of it, the layered weird neon colors in the background give the viewer a lot of pressure and fear, because you do not know what is coming towards you.
Among Brian's works, he mostly uses architectural, mechanical, interior and urban landscapes, and what is important is that many of it depict "no man's land." There is no living existence, only from his sufficient positioning the sense of light, showing that the traces of life. For instance, the "Personal Stability Zones" and the "Time Horizons," those two paintings depict no man but implicate one concern of Brian is the extreme population density in the future.  
In his works, Blair emphasizes the composition of horizontal and vertical lines. In his painting "Sunlight and personality" and The "Time and Change," he uses straight lines and cold color tone to represent the radical attitude as well as the sense of powerlessness. 


revised review: Brian Alfred " Future Shock" at Miles McEnery Gallery
Mengni Feng

The first work in the exhibition is called “Enclaves of the Future.” I feel a lot uninteresting of this work alone because it seems just like a very typical night scene painting at my first glimpse, but it does make sense if we associate this one with the exhibition title and rest of the works. The foreground of the painting is the silhouette of the mountains and trees. Against the fantastic yet bizarre glow in the background, the viewer was passively in the shadow of the mountain and given a mysterious sense of unknown.
Alfred’s works mostly use architectural, mechanical, interior and urban landscapes, and what is important is that many depict no living presence. For instance, "Personal Stability Zones" depict the subject matter of population density as nobody appears. It depicts the aisle of the residential building with full of the hanging laundry that is almost blocking the entire building.
In his works, Alfred was trying to express the sense of powerfulness of human being by the composition of horizontal and vertical lines and cold color tone. In his painting "Time and Change," he uses straight lines and basic geometries portraits a scene of after flooded village. The entire scene seems too peaceful to ever think about sorrow. You can only accept the fact that human’s inability in the face of natural disasters.


2 comments:

  1. It is interesting how you found "Enclaves of the Future" relates to the other work. I think the work could possibly be aiming to depict light pollution in what seems to be a rural setting, warning of a future where there is always a faint glow on the horizon. Alfred's color palette suggests something more intense however which left me assuming it may just be a sunrise or sunset. Perhaps that uncertainty that we feel about the meaning or even subject matter of the first painting is meant to be applied to our feelings about our future as a civilization? That seems like a stretch.

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  2. I thought your read on the potential meanings of this piece brought up some interesting possible content. I specifically think overpopulation is a theme that can be sensed in some of his paintings but wonder if in the piece with the white tree or the dark house in the forest if that meaning really carries. I’m not convinced that Brian Alfred’s show has one very coherent message in the visual elements, even if he were to cite them in a press release or to tell us about them. The question for me is whether or not that is a problem. Is the corral too big for us as viewers? Or does the open-ended nature of the message found in between these pretty different pieces allow the viewer to have a more poetic and less didactic experience of the work? It also might be good to specify why or how sharp lines give us a feeling of powerlessness. Is it because they feel digital and inhuman or is it something else?

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