Rodney Brown

Rodney Brown (b. 1954, Washington, DC) is a collagist and painter working with pastel and acrylic on paper to capture the gay male body in abstract fragmentation. By turns intimate and erotic, his painted and drawn compositions render sinuous anatomies and defined musculature in nonnaturalistic, primary palettes. Likewise, his collages incorporate hand-drawn and mechanical forms of duplication that iterate and defamiliarize the human form.

Brown’s work from 1985 onward has drawn particular influence from the assemblages of Romare Bearden. Reflecting on his oeuvre in a 1995 statement penned for the exhibition Arts Communities, AIDS Communities: Realizing the Archive Project—co-organized by Visual AIDS and presented at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, in 1996—Brown wrote, “Collage work allows me to blend diverse images, colors, and materials into something new, dynamic, and whole.” Turning his thoughts to the phenomenology of artistic practice, he added, “I feel that my art is a good reflection of how I feel when I do my work.” 

A social worker by trade, Brown was involved in the New York art scene from the mid-1980s through the early 1990s, exhibiting actively in Brooklyn-based galleries and producing sets for productions at the alternative art nonprofit the Kitchen. Outside of New York, Brown’s work has also been shown in Massachusetts and Ohio.