Marking moments in time in two styles

By Kristen Peterson

Thursday, July 24, 2008 | 2 a.m.

Chad Brown moved to town as a figurative painter in 2003, won best in show for a slightly abstract landscape painting at the Las Vegas Art Museum’s 2006 “Roundup” and is now exhibiting representational works at Dust Gallery.

That’s a lot of hopping around for the artist, who moved from Austin, Texas, to enter UNLV’s Master of Fine Arts Program.

But if ever there is an example of different tangents influencing a journey, it’s Brown’s work in “Marked,” a two-person exhibit that also features Seattle artist Etsuko Ichikawa’s glass pyrographs on paper.

Brown’s blend of abstract and representational styles is so strong you almost feel the artist pontificating on the differences between the two.

Well-defined objects are broken down into their simplest forms and colors. Emphasis on linear perspective brings the viewer deep into the works. His fluid lines create an invisible weight and a staid rhythm. The tone bounces among tranquillity, bleakness and vibrancy. Gallery owner Naomi Arin likens his work to the style and tone of New German painting.

“Civil Twilight,” an oil on canvas, is a pensive and somewhat melancholy look at the parked cars, endless telephone wires, orange construction cones and concrete buildings of an industrial downtown corridor. “Urban Locale #4,” one of four inks on paper, places you on a sun-drenched freeway, moving mindlessly along.

Brown, who studied mechanical engineering before plunging into art, takes an intellectual approach to his work by mathematically breaking apart visual objects. In fact, he says, he stumbled into abstract by exploring how little it takes to divide images by color and space. “Visit,” the painting that won him best in show, is a two-dimensional rendition of Robert Smithson’s earthwork, “Spiral Jetty,” that Brown “made foreign” by playing with the size and orientation.

Typically, he photographs scenes in Las Vegas and other cities. The camera grasps the moment, then Brown builds a composition that fuses traits from the photos and his memory of the image and the moment. Using impressionism as his stepping-off point, Brown applies very little marking to create the objects.

Sometimes the works seem incomplete, or in process, which is something Brown, who received his master’s from UNLV, acknowledges: “It’s like the thing is coming into being in front of you, instead of being literal and done.”

The pairing of Brown with Ichikawa seems surprising at first.

Ichikawa, a more established artist who studied at the Pilchuck Glass School in Seattle, wields molten glass to burn abstract forms onto paper. The marks create organic shapes that appear to be in motion and seem both fleeting and permanent. The visual and spiritual depth of the work is augmented by the painted brown wall dividing the gallery.

Ichikawa’s desire is to explore the space between ephemeral and eternal. Brown’s is to create the experience of life, rather than refer to it. Using completely different approaches, both are using minimal marking to create a moment and its impression.