Architecture: Marshall Brown | Remastériser
The Grand Piazza , 2021, Collage on archival paper, 44h x 36w in
© Marshall Brown, Courtesy of Western Exhibitions
Written and Photo Edited by Wenjie (Demi) Zhao
The esoteric realm of architecture, with its lofty portals, often eludes the grasp of mere mortals; yet, through the alchemy of collage and architectural photography, Marshall Brown has woven a golden thread that guides the uninitiated into the hidden depths and delights of this enigmatic world. As a sequel of Fall 2022 exhibition, The Architecture of Collage, at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Brown’s latest solo exhibition at Western Exhibitions, Remastériser, prepares a mesmerizing odyssey through the labyrinthine passageways of his visionary universe.
On view from April 28 to June 17, Marshall Brown: Remastériser opens a portal to a dimension were architectural dreams and fragmented realities coalesce into an exquisite tapestry of form and meaning. Juxtaposing chaos and order, the familiar and the novel, the works on display showcase Brown’s ongoing bodies of work — Prisons of Invention, Piranesian Maps of Berlin, and the debuting Forgeries — investigating the intricate and multilayered relationship between architecture, power, and creative process.
Periphery , 2023, collage on Arches watercolor paper, artist’s tape. 22.5 x 30 inches
© Marshall Brown, Courtesy of Western Exhibitions
The Round Tower , 2021, Collage on archival paper, 44h x 33w in
© Marshall Brown, Courtesy of Western Exhibitions
Marshall Brown, an artist and architect whose work creates new connections, associations, and meanings among disconnected architectural and urban remnants, is also an associate professor at Princeton University’s School of Architecture. He has been actively dissecting and connecting illustrations to forge new meanings of architecture in the contemporary art context. Cutting, pasting, selecting, layering, and using scissors and glue, photocopies, and torn-out books, Brown’s architectural collages speak to the Marcel Duchamp’s charm of “encountering” and making art through the element of “chance.” The readymade images in his collages embrace the spirit of radical defiance and subversion of artistic norms and aesthetics, ultimately dismantling the established order of architectural expression, as well as altering viewers’ ways of thinking, seeing, and perceiving architecture.
Factory , 2023, collage on Arches watercolor paper, artist’s tape. 22.5 x 30 inches
© Marshall Brown, Courtesy of Western Exhibitions
At the heart of Brown’s works lies not architecture itself, but rather architectural photography. Brown's work pivots around the central pillars of architectural photography and the art of collage, much like the musical stitching together of samples into a sonic collage where the interruption or appropriation is evident. Also inspired by Jonathan Lethem’s essay, The Ecstasy of Influence in 2017, Brown delves into the notion of plundering earlier art to make new art, working based on intertextuality and actively creating new connections while challenging outdated definitions of originality.
Through the masterful manipulation of collage and montage, Brown challenges conventional notions of authorship, originality, and the separation between art and architecture. By repurposing fragments of architectural photography and merging them into new, visually striking forms and narratives, Brown’s work invites viewers to explore the interplay between the past and the future, the known and the unknown, and to ultimately envision new possibilities in the realm of architecture and urban spaces.
Courtyard House , 2023, collage on Arches watercolor paper, artist’s tape. 18 x 24 inches
© Marshall Brown, Courtesy of Western Exhibitions
The recent works exhibited in Remastériser showcase Brown’s latest bodies of work, ranging from 2021 to 2023, collecting samples from the history of modern and contemporary architecture to create new forms of monumentality. The curated fragments and unexpected amalgamations fused to form new and boundless spaces. Step into the world of Remastériser and prepare to leave behind the constraints of time, space, and conventional understanding as you explore the cosmic interplay between what is and what could be.
For more information, visit Western Exhibitions’ website.
