Glenn Brown | Rebecca Warren

rennie collection is pleased to announce the first exhibition in Canada of work by Glenn Brown and Rebecca Warren. This also marks the first time these two Turner Prize-nominated artists have shown together. Seven paintings and a sculpture by Brown are presented in tandem with a series of Warren’s clay and bronze sculptures.

The Brown canvases are a nightmarish review of art history that revises and reframes the work of masters and sci-fi illustrators alike. Included is his first diptych, They Threw Us All in a Pit and Built a Monument On Top, which debuted at the 2003 Venice Biennale, and also his massive The Ever Popular Dead (measuring more than seven-by-eleven feet), which debuted at Brown’s Turner Prize show in 2000. Produced between 1997 and 2005, these works represent Brown’s broad scope as much as his singular Mannerist vision.

The Warren works are equally disruptive. Her sculptures are mangled and tumescent, responding to the manicured forms of classical statuary by making obvious the kneading and manipulation that calls form into being. Offsetting the clay work is Warren’s monolithic Cube, a five-foot block of rough-hewn bronze that may remind gallery-goers of the origins and inscrutable promise of core materials. These works constitute a distinct series originally displayed in the Tate’s Duveen gallery at the 2006 Tate Triennial. 

Both artists willfully interrogate and refashion standards from the art world’s multiple histories. Seen together for the first time, the works acquire new references, new appropriations. A crosspollination becomes possible with these two distinct practices drawing from each other as much as they draw from the past.

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Glenn Brown is a British artist, born in 1966. His work has been the subject of solo and group exhibitions at institutions throughout the world, including Tate Liverpool; Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna; Ludwig Museum, Budapest; and Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin.

Rebecca Warren, also based in Britain, was born in 1965. Her work has been exhibited at The Art Institute of Chicago; Serpentine Gallery, London; New Museum, New York; and at the Tate Triennial.

rennie collection is one of the largest collections of contemporary art in Canada. Over a number of years, it has evolved to focus on works related to identity, social injustice, appropriation, and the nature of painting and photography. The collection is made up of work by approximately 200 artists, including John Baldessari, Martin Creed, Andrew Grassie, Rodney Graham, Mona Hatoum, Brian Jungen, Richard Jackson, Louise Lawler, and Ian Wallace. While based in Vancouver, the collection is usually spread across the globe, on loan to institutions such as Guggenheim New York, Centre Pompidou, the Smithsonian Institution, and Tate Modern, among many others. The Wing Sang building, the oldest structure in Vancouver’s Chinatown, was renovated in 2009 to create an exhibition space in which the collection could be displayed locally. rennie collection at Wing Sang holds two shows each year.