Brian Calvin New Works at ANTON KERN GALLERY

James Kalm is on the bike, cruising through the Midtown neighborhood and decides to stop in at the new Anton Kern Gallery to check out what’s up. Brian Calvin presents a selection of new paintings which continue his exploration of the female face. By cropping and stretching the image in unexpected ways, Calvin hones in on elements of beauty and plays with the notion of “pose”. An elongated neck, a forehead without eyebrows, or a pair of lips isolated on a dark background, all represent a distillation of features that we look at on a daily basis, but don’t see until some anomaly breaks out expectations and forces our attention. These “porcelain masks” balance the line between the comic and the fashionable, with a painterly sense of flatness, not only in their compositional elements but in their acrylic surface as well. This program was recorded September 15, 2017.