HENSE: New Paintings is on view through July 20, 2013 at Maxwell Colette Gallery, featuring a body of large-scale paintings on wood and smaller works on canvas from the internationally lauded muralist, Alex HENSE Brewer.
HENSE’s work is fluid and playful. It is a delicate interplay of geometric shapes, organic forms, abstract lines and frenetic squiggles executed in a furious effusion of saturated pastel hues. His massive, free-form paintings and epic public mural installations are not what you would expect from someone with HENSE’s Graffiti pedigree. His work is a natural extension of the radical visual legacy of Abstract Expressionism, but it is imbued with a palette purloined from some tropical paradise and a swagger that places it firmly in the current Post-Street Art age. HENSE says he is “combining the language and techniques of graffiti art with the formal language of painting in [the] studio,” and that his paintings “are invigorated by the quick pace and commentary of street culture.”
Alex HENSE Brewer’s nearly two decades working in the realm of public art grants and commissions has produced exterior works across the U.S, and abroad in Spain, France, Japan, Taiwan, Peru and Mexico. In April 2013 he completed a massive commissioned wall in the heart of Lima, Peru. In the fall of 2012 he garnered national attention for his treatment of the entire exterior of a historic church in Washington, DC. His work is held in numerous collections including The High Museum of Art in Atlanta. Complete information about HENSE may be found on his site.
