FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Karen Hochman Brown
Anonymous@theBeach
A solo exhibition
June 11 – July 6, 2019
Opening Reception June 15, 5-8 PM
VIP preview June 15, 3-5 PM
Artist Walkthrough June 29, 1 PM
TAG Gallery
5458 Wilshire Blvd,
Los Angeles, 90036
https://www.taggallery.net/
(Los Angeles) — In her first solo show titled Anonymous@theBeach opening on June 15th, Los Angeles artist Karen Hochman Brown features digitally synthesized artworks and animations that show a world where the seen and unseen collide.
Hochman Brown is a photography-based digital artist. She uses a graphic synthesizer software program to create custom virtual paintbrushes, changing settings of endless parameters that react to a visual reference. The brushstrokes are applied one by one based on information such as shape, color, orientation and luminance. In this process, she is not limited to using photographs for reference and can venture into a world of totally algorithmic creations. Results can mimic natural painting styles or come off as purely graphic. In addition to 2-D works, the artist processes images over time to develop animations.
The exhibition features framed printouts of her digital imagery, showing perforated figures that allow the background to show through. Background and foreground interplay as the subjects melt into each other and nothingness. Hochman Brown explores the paradox of seeing and being seen by the multitudes, while still maintaining a sense of privacy.
“I grew up in Santa Barbara and have long had an obsession with people-watching at the beach,” says Hochman Brown. “Of course, I too am exposing myself to those who might want to ogle me, yet I do not feel as though I am being observed. I am just one of many enjoying private moments in a very public place.”
The exhibition will also include an interactive installation made for the social media age that speaks to the paradox of staying private while presenting publicly, extending the concept of exposure beyond the graphic work. With an abstract representation of a crowded day at the shore as a backdrop, a variety of playful props will give patrons the ability to create and post selfies that insure anonymity.
According to Hochman Brown: “In this age of social media, we grapple with versions of ourselves that we put out into the world. Fear of missing out tugs at our egos as we tell the world stories that exaggerate and glamorize us above the mundane. We present ourselves in a highly curated manner.”
But she feels maybe the time has come for pushback against these fabrications, forwarding a desire to show ourselves more realistically. Even if doing so leaves us in a vulnerable place. We are drawn to the brief burst of fame that comes with a flurry of likes and thumbs-up reactions. Our whole self-worth can be propelled or defeated by feedback to a single exposure, but we still strive for that recognition.
Anonymous@theBeach will be at TAG Gallery June 11 – July 6, 2019. There will be an opening reception on June 15, 5-8 PM with a VIP preview from 3-5 PM and an Artist Walkthrough June 29, 1 PM.
About Karen Hochman Brown
Karen Hochman Brown received her B.A. in Art from Pitzer College, has continued to study math, and did post-graduate work at California College of the Arts and Crafts where her Master’s thesis introduced Construction Geometry via Art, a Junior High School curriculum she taught at Pasadena Waldorf School. She continued to study the interconnections of math and art via technology at UCLA studying graphic design in the
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