Tim Brawner produces a practice of painting that mines the space between the uncanny and the grotesque. Seeking to produce in the viewer a compelling affect of unease, Brawner utilizes the idiom of illustration to render images of alienation, through the purposeful bricolage of disparate representational elements. In each work, a persistently fine, painterly execution meets the artist’s formal drafting process of drawing and montage to achieve what Brawner terms a pathos of ‘weirdness’: a form of defamiliarization which is also a seduction, an entreat, into a strange representational space nonetheless evoking trepidation and dread. These visual chimeras undermine the spectators’ traditional binary frames of reference, eliding at once those of conservative Western Christian morality and those of liberal secular paradigms of Enlightened empathy.

Tim Brawner uses techniques such as illustration and monochrome painting to create an uncanny affect of unease in his large paintings. He explores the space of the grotesque and the strange in the hope of distancing the viewer from his subjects. In each work, an insistently fine painterly execution meets the artist's formal drawing and montage processes to become at what Brawner calls a pathos of 'weirdness': a form of alienation that is also a temptation, an entreaty, to a strange representational space that nevertheless evokes fear and anxiety.

Margot Samel

Management

New York City

Omaha

London

Union Pacific

Page (Nyc)

Washington

Von Ammon Co

Tim Brawner

Providence

Rhode Island School Of Design (Risd)

Yale School of Art

Blue Bird

Epoisses