Delia Brown
Jai Maa!
The gallery is pleased to announce that it will be returning to Independent for the 5th time this year, with a solo presentation by Delia Brown, especially conceived for the New York fair.
Hervé Bize likes to see fairs as an extension of its place and builds its proposals like its exhibitions within its walls, here there is an obvious link which connects the presentation we made at Independent 2019 with Alain Jacquet and Delia Brown’s project.
Hervé Bize has been following Delia Brown’s work for a long time, and for some years has been keen to invite her to collaborate. The rebel spirit of Independent, off the beaten track, suits them perfectly, both being “on the edge” of the art world while still being part of it.
Delia Brown, known in the early 2000s for her paintings and works on paper in which she physically inscribed herself in situations, kind of faux fictions where a very hedonistic atmosphere transpired, has taken a break and the artist is now focused on other things of a completely different order.
Intimacy is still present, but the essence of it has changed. Brown has worked on herself, demolished thought systems and, in the process, reconnected with the essential (or her essence), that divine part of us that she recognizes in those around her and transcribes in her new paintings.
The power of the feminine, the archetype of the Great Mother, accompanies her new life: she has been experimenting with this energy in different universes, with the Multiverse and the forces of the universe she calls gods. She mentions that Albert Einstein called these forces “unified fields”, that we are all manifestations of these forces and this universal consciousness, and that we will only return to them in another form when we die.
Jai Maa! is the title of this new project, which will be presented by the gallery at Independent 2024.
Jai Ma means Victory to Shakti (or Durga, or any other name of the Mother). This idea comes from an ancient Hindu concept, the great mother, for whom the Hindus have 108 names.
In the ancient texts, her main name is Shakti, which designates the externalized feminine energy of a masculine divinity Shiva, but she has other names.
These paintings are to function as portraits as individual incarnations of the mother, but also they ask us to see the deeper reality beyond the personality and the physical form.
The title Jai Maa! asks us to apprehend the deeper force that animates all of creation, that is the source of life, always present and waiting to be known by us. The multiplicity of styles and ways she manifests herself will be reflected in the diversity of the women represented in the portraits.
Delia Brown chose each woman because of how they embody their uniqueness without apology.
These works are portraits of women who are friends of the artist or acquaintances, or people she admires, depicting them as goddesses.
Delia Brown (born 1969, Berkeley), lives and works in Berkeley.
Solo exhibitions at Margo Leavin Gallery, Los Angeles; Maccarone, Los Angeles; D’Amelio Terras, New York; Tibor de Nagy, New York; Baldwin Gallery, Aspen; Galleria Il Capricorno, Venice; Gallery Hyundai, Seoul ; and Perrotin, Paris, among others.
Her work has been featured in group exhibitions at the FLAG Art Foundation, 56 Henry, Eric Firestone Gallery, and Miles McEnery, in New York; Gavlak Gallery and Praz-Delavallade in Los Angeles.
Hervé Bize has presented his work in several group exhibitions: in 2008,
Blast from the past I; in 2017,U Scope I’m God Say Hi Or Be John; in 2019,
Monde(s) merveilleux ; in 2022, Cluster II, and in 2024,Américanologies.
Insitutional exhibitions include presentations at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center Sheboygan,
Wisconsin in 2006, The 10th Biennial of Havana, Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Cuba in 2009 and the Prague Biennial, Czech Republic in 2003.
Her work is included in the permanent collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Grunwald Center Collection of the Hammer Museum, Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, Seattle Art Museum, and Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific Film Archive.