{"id":2449736,"date":"2019-10-10T16:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-10-10T22:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspentimes.com\/?p=314083"},"modified":"2019-10-10T16:00:00","modified_gmt":"2019-10-10T22:00:00","slug":"artist-robert-brinker-explodes-paintings-for-mindfunk-at-the-art-base-in-basalt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/local-news\/artist-robert-brinker-explodes-paintings-for-mindfunk-at-the-art-base-in-basalt\/","title":{"rendered":"Artist Robert Brinker explodes paintings for \u201cMindfunk\u201d at the Art Base in Basalt"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Robert Brinker finishes one of his small canvas paintings for his show at the Art Base in his studio on Wednesday, October 9, 2019. (Kelsey Brunner\/The Aspen Times)<\/strong>
Kelsey Brunner\/The Aspen Times<\/em><\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

Sometimes you want to put together a puzzle and sometimes you want to dump the pieces on the floor. Aspen-based artist Robert Brinker does both with shards and scraps from previous bodies of work in his new solo exhibition, \u201cMindfunk,\u201d opening Friday at the Art Base in Basalt.<\/p>\n

This fascinating new body of work includes several permutations of non-traditional paintings, originally inspired by bits of paper left over from Brinker\u2019s signature cut-paper works.<\/p>\n

\u201cMindfunk\u201d may seem at first to be a departure from his best known practice. But the new work began quite literally from the same place.<\/p>\n

Brinker saves everything. His studio \u2013 built into a steep hillside on West Buttermilk and shared with his partner of 25 years, Pamela Joseph<\/a> \u2013 doubles as a sort of emporium of half-formed ideas, abandoned projects and the detritus of those completed. He\u2019s found inspiration in seemingly mundane studio flotsam like his paint-smudged palettes and curled sheets of film. \u201cMindfunk\u201d began with scraps of snipped paper he\u2019d saved in piles.<\/p>\n

Looking at the unintentional shapes left behind after meticulously crafting cut-paper clouds and dragons, he thought he might make something of them.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can see there are all these different cuts and shapes, where are pretty random because they were leftover bits,\u201d he said, sifting through a pile of tiny paper shards on Monday. \u201cI\u2019m using all the leftovers and being forced to use all these shapes that I probably never would have made.\u201d<\/p>\n

Brinker started by collaging the pieces together into small abstract pieces. Then he thought about how those collages might translate into paintings. But, in keeping with his career-long aesthetic interest in the power of layered textures, Brinker wasn\u2019t content with a flat painting on canvas. Instead, he wanted to take the modular technique of the cut paper collages and translate it into a larger painting format \u2013 so he cut wood pieces, wrapped them in painted linen, and then fit them together like a jigsaw puzzle to form shaped canvases.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not a duplicate,\u201d he said, looking from a collage on a workbench to painting on the wall. \u201cIt\u2019s a next step.\u201d<\/p>\n

The step after that was an explosion.<\/p>\n

In the process of making the jigsaw paintings, Brinker was inspired by seeing the pieces separated and spread across his studio floor. So he began experimenting with works that didn\u2019t put the pieces back together.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt helped me make something I never could have made before,\u201d he recalled. \u201cI said, \u2018I actually want to explode them.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

The explosions are the two centerpiece installations of the \u201cMindfunk\u201d exhibition: sculpted and painted shapes spread across the walls and covered in abstract imagery and dot patterns. One, \u201cMindfunk Grisaille Explosion,\u201d is rendered in greys. The other, \u201cMindfunk Color Explosion,\u201d bursts in day-glo colors with abstract strokes of paint reminiscent of street art graffiti and \u201cSaved By the Bell\u201d typography. (Brinker is visually omnivorous, taking his cues from photo portraiture, pixel patterns, commercial signage, neo-classical imagery, and kids\u2019 cereal box cartoons.)<\/p>\n

Brinker has exhibited internationally and locally, but this weekend\u2019s opening marks his first show at the Art Base. He said the nonprofit gallery gave him compete freedom to do what he wanted with the show, which led him to explore this completely new terrain as an artist.<\/p>\n

Brinker first arrived in the mountains in 1993, running the print shop at Anderson Ranch Arts Center. In the decades since, he\u2019s shown frequently in Aspen galleries \u2013 most recently at Harvey Preston Gallery \u2013 as well as being represented at Michael Warren Contemporary in Denver and Francis M. Naumann in Manhattan.<\/p>\n

His best known work through the years have been his intricate and beguiling cut paper works, such as his \u201cChasing Dragons\u201d series which used the recognizable pattern of Chinese cut-paper dragons but was embedded with imagery of nude models.<\/p>\n

Brinker\u2019s detail work on his cut-paper pieces is tough on the hands. So, by physical necessity, his studio practice includes other forms that give his hand muscles a break \u2013 photography and collage and collaborations with Joseph (their \u201cHybrids\u201d series was exhibited at Francis Naumann in the spring).<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are a lot of similarities and overlap, even though I\u2019m more abstract and she is dealing with more with social and political issues,\u201d Brinker said of their influence on one another.<\/p>\n

Brinker expects to keep working on the exploded \u201cMindfunk\u201d series, and expects the idea to continue morphing into new forms.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m going to continue to make them,\u201d Brinker said, \u201cand make them from bigger pieces.\u201d<\/p>\n

atravers@aspentimes.com<\/a><\/p>\n

via:: The Aspen Times<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Robert Brinker finishes one of his small canvas paintings for his show at the Art Base in his studio on Wednesday, October 9, 2019. (Kelsey Brunner\/The Aspen Times)Kelsey Brunner\/The Aspen Times Sometimes you want to put together a puzzle and sometimes you want to dump the pieces on the floor. Aspen-based artist Robert Brinker does […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2449736","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-local-news"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-08-19 17:49:48","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSPN The Valley's Quality Rock","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2449736","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2449736"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2449736\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2449736"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2449736"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2449736"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}