Charles Browning

News and updates

The Big Show 9
May 16 - June 12, 2015
Opening Reception: Saturday, May 16, 4-8 pm
Silas Marder Gallery
120 Snake Hollow Road
Bridgehampton, NY
T: 631-702-2306
http://www.silasmarder.com/

 


Breathless
February 27 - April 11, 2014
Opening Reception: Thursday February 27, 6-8 pm
Rush Arts Gallery
526 W.26th St., suite 311
New York, NY

 


The Big Show 8
May 18 - June 18, 2013
Opening Reception: Saturday, May 18, 5-9 pm
Silas Marder Gallery
120 Snake Hollow Road
Bridgehampton, NY
T: 631-702-2306
http://www.silasmarder.com/


 

The Romantic Impulse: Currents in Contemporary Art / Part II
August 2 - 31, 2012
Opening Reception: Friday, August 3, 5-7 pm
Gross McCleaf Gallery
127 S. Sixteenth Street
Philadelphia, PA
T: 215-665-8138
http://www.grossmccleaf.com/


 

Painting Is History

Featuring work by Charles Browning, The Chadwicks, David Fertig, Joe Fig, Valerie Hegarty, and Steve Mumford

July 11 - August 10, 2012
Winkleman Gallery
621 West 27th Street
New York, NY 10001
T: 212.643.3152
http://www.winkleman.com
James Kalm video review


 

Beauty Trap

October 13 - November 12, 2011
Solo show at Schroeder Romero & Shredder
Opening Reception Thursday, October 13, 6-8 PM
Schroeder Romero & Shredder
531 West 26th Street
New York NY 10001
tel 212.630.0722
http://srandsgallery.com/
email: info@srandsgallery.com

A page of gallery shots from the show.
Review of this show



BBBBad
...an exhibition with attitudes
Curated by Doug McClemont and Billy Miller
June 30 - August 12, 2011
Anna Kustera Gallery
520 West 21st Street
New York, NY 10011
tel 212-989-0082
http://www.annakustera.com/


 


PREVIOUS SHOWS:

  • History of What
    Group Show
    June 25 - August 3, 2011
    The Silas Marder Gallery
    120 Snake Hollow Road
    Bridgehampton, NY 11932
    tel 631-702-2306
    http://www.silasmarder.com/


     
  • Hunt & Chase
    Curated by Beth Rudin DeWoody & James Salomon
    July 11 - August 15, 2010
    Salomon Contemporary
    6 Plank Road, #3
    East Hampton, NY
    http://www.salomoncontemporary.com/


     
  • Epic Painting
    Oct 23-Dec. 8, 2009
    Works from
    Al Banisadr, Charles Browning, Robert Colescott, Julie Heffernan, Laurie Hogin, and Nicky Nodjoumi
    Bucknell University
    Samek Art Gallery
    Lewisburg, PA 17837
    tel 570.577.3792
    https://www.bucknell.edu/arts-and-performance/samek-art-gallery/exhibitions/past/2009-10/epic-painting.html


     
  • It's a Schro Ro Summer!
    July 9 - 31, 2009
    Works from
    Brice Brown, Charles Browning, Janice Caswell, Susan Graham, Eric Heist, Andy Diaz Hope and Laurel Roth, Laurie Hogin, William Powhida, Michael Waugh, Ken Weaver
    SCHROEDER ROMERO
    637 West 27th Street
    New York, NY 10001
    www.schroederromero.com


     
  • Strangers in a Strange Land
    August 2009
    Works from
    Charles Browning, Duncan Hannah, Todd Hebert, and Carl D'Alvia
    Morgan Lehman Gallery
    24 Sharon Road/Rte 41
    PO Box 1305
    Lakeville, CT 06039
    tel (860) 435.0898
    fax (860) 435.0899
    http://www.morganlehmangallery.com/
    Review of this show


     
  • Dark Americana
    Featuring: Derek Albeck; Grant Barnhart; Charles Browning; Bruce Conner; Chris Crites; R. Crumb; Oscar Cueto; Jack Daws; John De Fazio; Bill Fick; Scott Fife; Maria Forde; Rebecca Goldfarb; Tom Huck; Charles Krafft; Brendan Lott; TV Moore; Raymond Pettibon; Liz Rossof; Roger Shimomura.
    April 4th - May 9th, 2009
    Opening Reception: Saturday, April 4th, 2009, 4pm - 6pm
    Baer Ridgway Exhibitions
    172 Minna Street
    San Francisco, CA

     
  • Giving Face
    Portraits for a New Generation
    Curated by Stephen Heighton
    Press release (PDF)
    Featuring: Nina Chanel Abney; Damien Hirst; Skylar Fein; Nick Cave; Bénédicte Peyrat; Norbert Bisky; James Gobel; Kim Dorland; Cayce Zavaglia; Ken Weaver; James Everett Stanley; Charlie Roberts; Andrew Diaz Hope; Liz Markus; Li Bo; Charles Browning; Nathan Ritterpusch; Robert Loughlin; Jon Flack; Randy Polumbo; Julie Heffernan.
    March 7 - April 11, 2009
    Opening Reception: Saturday, March 7, 2009, 6-9 pm
    Nicholas Robinson Gallery
    535 West 20th Street
    New York NY 10011
    Tel (212) 560-9075
    Fax (212) 560-9076
    http://www.nrgallery.com


     
  • Remembering to Forget: Strategies of Propaganda and Mythology
    Charles Browning's solo show at Schroeder Romero
    May 15 - June 21, 2008
    Opening Reception: Thursday, May 15, 6-8pm
    Schroeder Romero
    637 West 27th Street - Ground Floor
    New York, NY 10001
    (212) 630-0722
    http://www.schroederromero.com
    Reviews of this show from the Back-seat Critic and Donne Tempo


     
  • Caucus
    Charles Browning - Jennifer Dalton - Eric Heist - Laurie Hogin
    Lou Laurita - Walter Martin & Paloma Muñoz - Laura Parnes
    William Powhida - Heidi Schlatter - Michael Waugh - David Wojnarowicz
    January 10 - February 16, 2008
    Opening Reception: Thursday, January 10, 6-8pm
    Schroeder Romero
    637 West 27th Street - Ground Floor
    New York, NY 10001
    (212) 630-0722
    http://www.schroederromero.com


     
  • Keeping it Real
    Curated by Jerry Kearns
    November 15 - December 21, 2007
    James W. and Lois I. Richmond Center for Visual Arts
    Gwen Frostic Shool of Art
    Albertine Monroe Brown Gallery
    College of Fine Arts
    Western Michigan University
    1903 W. Michigan Avenue
    Kalamazoo, MI 49008
    Director of Exhibitions: Don Desmett @ 269-387-2455


     
  • Promised Land
    Curated by Elizabeth M. Grady
    June 7 - August 4, 2007
    Morgan Lehman Gallery, NYC
    web: http://www.morganlehmangallery.com
    READ REVIEWS FROM: The Village Voice; The New York Times


     
  • Story Redefined
    Curated by Ji-Yaang Kim & Sisun Song
    April 12 - 28, 2007
    POIETIS GALLERY / POET'S DEN ART CENTER, NYC


     
  • Don't Know Much About History
    Curated by Denise Markonish
    November 18, 2006 - January 20, 2007
    Artspace, New Haven, CT
    http://www.artspacenh.org/

    READ REVIEWS FROM: The New York Times; The New Haven Advocate; CT Artscene; CT Central;

     


OTHER BROWNING INFORMATION:

About Charles Browning's work:

Everything in nature is lyrical in its ideal essence, tragic in its fate, and comic in its existence. - George Santayana

The past is never dead. It's not even past. - William Faulkner

The paintings of Charles Browning offer a complex interplay of Art and History, humor and brutality, sincerity and irony, narrative and allegory. They present us with a "new" history painting, one that lays claim to a position of authority among the images of the past. Browning's sincerely flat-footed love of an anachronistic form of painting adroitly skewers the propaganda of frontier mythology. Using the associative potential of historical imagery and narrative, the scope of Browning's work expands to implicate us all in the goings on within.

What's your strategy? Blow on west, shooting and drinking, and before you know it, you've conquered a continent. Use it or lose it! "We The People" shall decide who shall be included in "The People." All others will serve or be destroyed, absorbed, or forgotten. We move closer to the self-evident truths and inalienable rights laid out at the founding of the nation by eliminating inconvenient claimants. And they will keep popping up!

What's wrong with this picture? We live in funny times. We live in unfunny times. A confluence of Nationalism and Romanticism in 19th century American painting forms an image of the nation, a cultural foundation for the idea of Manifest Destiny, for Paul Bunyan, Kit Carson, Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett. Distract the people from real dangers with shadow play. Shoot where there are easy targets. Sound familiar? Tell us another story of our great success, a story to explain away the cruel clowns and buffoonish brutes from then 'till now.

 


 


Press comments:

From "Fixing What' Aint Broken: Notes on Non Magical Realism" by Douglas Kelley (http://dks.thing.net/)

 

 

 

When Charles Browning paints about 'Politics out of History' he does not mean an ahistorical politics, but a politics that has lost its mooring in History as a grand narrative of progress. he accordingly situates his work within that paradoxical space where modernity and postmodernity -- structured history and posthistoire -- are entangled. Here he identifies a pervasive cultural and political malaise: a residual bad faith whereby we fetishise or mourn the anachronistic forms of a more meaningful history even as we jettison their foundations. His aim is to think through the possibilities that emerge from these ruins of modernity and to resist the dangers of a reactionary, moralising or nostalgic politics that all too readily emerges from anxieties incurred on the threshold of post-modernity. Indeed he strikes a rather recuperative note in his introduction by espousing the hope that history 'may finally come home.'

 


Foundry notes:

Charles Browning is a long time friend of mine. We have worked together on many projects over the years, including several Yellow Snow Chapbooks and the Mote CD package. Charles created the What are you afraid of? installation with Lynda Gene Rymond, for which I recorded music (these recordings led to the Descent album, which I released under the name The Apiary). Charles and I collaborated again several years later on the A Year and A Day installation (I provided the soundtrack for the video element), for which Charles was the recipient of the Michener Millennium Design Award.

Charles has painted for as long as I've known him and has shown work in various galleries over the years. Charles has been developing a significant body of work, creating paintings more layered and complex every year - it has been exciting to see such growth. You can explore a selection of this work at the left.

The small reproductions here certainly do not do justice to the full sized works (note the actual size below each work), but they will, I think, whet your appetite to attend one of the many shows in which Charles is having his work displayed.

Michael Bentley (1 January 2007)