Half-Life #4 (after Rembrandt), 2017

Renowned for his Mannerist revisions of existing, well-known artworks, Glenn Brown is a contemporary painter whose work draws inspiration from science fiction and the otherworldly. Through his reproductions of various works, Brown alters the colours, sizes and shapes of the original subject to create a distorted, often grotesque image that can appear to be decaying– Debaser is among his most celebrated outputs and is inspired by the work of Gustave Courbet; the painting itself samples a hedge from a Courbet work, but Brown has used delicate, thin brushstrokes to depict the decaying of the flowers. Asides from his paintings, Brown has also received acclaim for his sculptures which he creates by amassing dense layers of oil-based paint over existing structures or found bronze molds – in contrast to the flat effect that his paintings produce, Brown’s sculptures highlight the three-dimensional effect of oil brushstrokes. (Artist website)