Becky Brown

MFA

Becky Brown.

Becky Brown

MFA

Becky Brown

MFA

Research Field

Painting

Education

  • MFA, Hunter College, 2012; Concentration in Painting

Bio

Becky Brown was born in Manhattan, and lived in Brooklyn and the Bronx before relocating to Buffalo in 2019. She received her BA from Brown University (Providence, RI) with a double major in Visual Arts and English, and her MFA in Painting from Hunter College (NYC).

She works between painting, drawing, sculpture and installation using found images, objects and texts. Diverse materials inform her practice, including pre-modern poetic forms, current headlines, photo-journalism and discarded appliances. Both 2D and 3D compositions depend on a logic of squishing things together. For Becky, density and excess best address the bottomless internet, as she questions whether unlimited access to information and communication actually brings us deeper knowledge or human connection. 

Recent solo exhibitions include Arts+Leisure Gallery (NYC) and Fort Gondo Complex for the Arts (St. Louis). Group exhibitions include The Drawing Center (NYC), Queens Museum (NYC), Freight+Volume Gallery (NYC), Flux Factory (NYC), NARS Foundation (Brooklyn, NY), YoungArts Foundation (Miami, FL) and Religare Arts Initiative (Delhi, India). Her installation “No, said the Fruit Bowl,” in the kitchen of an abandoned home on Governors Island, was described by Ken Johnson in his New York Times review as “machines vomiting as if in a bulimic’s nightmare.” Becky has been an artist-in-residence at MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, Jentel, and the Edward Albee and Saltonstall Foundations, among others. In 2018, she received a “Bronx Recognizes Its Own” Award from the Bronx Council on the Arts. Her art criticism has been published in Art in America and The Brooklyn Rail.

Selected Bibliography

  • Mary Sky Season Catalogue, Published by Mary Sky, Hancock, VT, 2018
  • Cognition-Stroll: Annette Cords and Becky Brown, Jonathan Goodman, Arte Fuse, 2017
  • Excess Baggage: Interview with Chennie Huang, CH Reviews, 2017
  • Becky Brown, Annette Cords and Accidental Poetry, Two Coats of Paint, 2017
  • Becky Brown on Sunday Painter podcast (interview), 2016
  • Portal – An Art Show at the Federal Hall National Memorial, by Karin Bravin, Site Specific, 2016
  • Becky Brown at Fink and Theel Contemporary (interview), 2015
  • Metaphysics of the Kitchen, by Tatiana Istomina, Metaleptic Stories, 2014
  • Overlapping Codes: Becky Brown and Annette Cords by David Anaya Maya, The Bottom Line, Drawing Center, 2014
  • Gems Among the Ruins: Governors Island Art Fair Fills Colonel’s Row by Ken Johnson, New York Times, 2014
  • Summer Lingers at the Governors Island Art Fair by Sarah Cascone, Artnet News
  • Governors Island Art Fair Lodges in NY Harbor’s Military Ruins by Allison Meier, Hyperallergic, 2014
  • Art, a Balm After the Storm: ‘Come Together: Surviving Sandy”  by Roberta Smith, New York Times, 2013
  • Influx of Information, by Chennie Huang, 2012
  • Becky Brown by Emily Schlemowitz, Hunter College MA candidate in Art History, 2012
  • Becky Brown by Paola Cabal, for The Transforming State catalogue, Religare Arts Initiative; Delhi, India, 2010

Courses

  • ART 211LAB Basic Painting
  • ART 494LAB Senior Thesis

Other Painting Faculty