Monica J. Brown: Into the Field of Awareness Dances Time
Opening: Friday, Jul 21, 2023 5 – 8 pmFriday, Jul 21 – Aug 11, 2023
1463 W. Chicago Ave.
Chicago, IL 60642
“Into the Field of Awareness Dances Time” is a body of work which combines Afrofuturism, abstraction, and elements of pop art aesthetics. This overlap of genres is used to create a dialogue around the ideas of memory, history and personal mythology. A “collage” technique is used which takes old and/or unfinished paintings and reimagines them by placing a new painting on top, integrating the imagery together to tell a story about the illusion of time. Other images in this series take a simple graphic arts approach and focus more on the play of color.
Some inquiries that form the ideas around this series include: What does time do to memory, and memory to time? How much abstraction is needed to sort through these ideas? What is a lifetime, and what part does memory play in creating a life? How much power lives in a moment, and how many moments are needed to fulfill a journey? What role does perception play in life events? Can the illusions created through paint solidify a feeling in the way that a photograph is able to capture a moment? Can an entire story be told in one image? How many stories live inside one story? The dance of the thread of life, the weaving of dreams, the circumference of a dream: what remains at the center? How many dreams unfold inside one dream?