Wednesday, December 17, 2014

Brian Nissen

Met an interesting artist today, Brian Nissen. Born in London 1939, moved to Mexico 1963 and since the 80s has flitted around between Mexico City, New York and Barcelona. Virtually unknown in UK (though he had a solo show at Whitechapel Art Gallery in 70s), he is an important figure in Mexico. A lot of his work is influenced by pre-Colombian art..... I particularly like a recent work called Red Sea - a huge (120ft x 15ft) white on white mural in the Centre Maguen David Centre in Mexico City. But instead of paint, it's made of 250 individual shapes, splaying left and right from a central point. A skylight behind produces fantastic, dramatic shadows and you could almost be Moses, about to take the Israelites between the foaming seas to the promised land.   

No comments:

Post a Comment