Author Description

Cecily Brown's dazzlingly amorphous and sexually suggestive canvases have gained much attention and acclaim over the past few years, and she has become one of the key figures in the strong resurgence of painting at the turn of the millenium. At first glance her works seem to be in debt to Abstract Expressionist painters like Phillip Guston and de Kooning, but a deeper look reveals that there is much more here than meets the eye -- behind the beautiful textured slashes of color there lurk mysterious scenes that dare the viewer to make sense of them. Brown's talent for color and composition is as stunning as the challenges she raises against cliched notions of "the gaze", suggesting that what is problematic about watching is exactly what makes it so enjoyable. This is the elegant catalogue produced in conjunction with the 2000 Gagosian London exhibition of British painter Cecily Brown - her first one-person show at the gallery. Each of her twenty-seven large-scale works shown is reproduced along with A.M. Homes' essay "Motion Pictures".