Brandon Deener Jazz Paintings at the Galerie 75 Faubourg
Californian artist Brandon Deener unveils a selection of 15 big-scale oil paintings in a magnificent exhibition at the Galerie 75 Faubourg, presented in collaboration with Tony Shafrazi and Doriano Navarra. His spectacular artworks, often portraits, are inseparable from a touching and dreamlike jazz-inspired universe. The African-American figures, with their elongated necks and slender, sometimes distended silhouettes, are often depicted playing music. If you pay close attention, you might be able to hear Charlie Parker’s saxophone and Dizzy Gillespie’s trumpet, both featuring in “Players of the Horn”, a vibrant tribute to Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Horn Players.
But Deener’s work cannot be reduced to a mere pictorial representation of musicians. His work brings together many themes such as music, interpersonal relationships, as well as social, political and spiritual awareness, against a backdrop of more or less implicit Afrofuturistic inspirations. Giving a further comprehensive understanding, the exhibition is accompanied by an illustrated monograph designed by Sébastien Moreu.
At the opening, alongside Brandon Deener, Tony Shafrazi and Doriano Navarra, we met Matt Dillon, Pom Klementieff, ORLAN and many others.
Text: Agathe Ternoy
Photos: Louis Liébert
