Tim Brawner’s Strange Twist
Tim Brawner, Rita (2024). Acrylic on canvas, 60 x 60 in. Courtesy of the artist and Management, New York.
It is a strange twist of fate that Last Caress, the grotesque solo show featuring Tim Brawner’s magical-hyperrealistic paintings, opened on the very day of David Lynch’s death. Management—a gallery that already possesses many of the attributes of a Foucauldian heterotopia, hidden within a busy Chinatown office building and representing artists with mystical, transcendent sensibilities—introduced eight acrylic works by the young Midwestern artist.
This time, the topical eeriness emerges from something deep within the US context, investigating societal reactions and psychological conditions in relation to the country’s excess and decline, as if we were to merge Lynch’s “ontology”—rooted in the unsettling contrast between reality, observed from a safe distance, and the absolute proximity of the real—with a post-apocalyptic, zombie world. [1]
In Last Caress, postmodern hyperrealism guides the viewer into the unsettling realization that the very overproximity to reality brings about a “loss of reality.” [2] As painter and writer Andrew Woolbright highlights in the exhibition’s press text, Brawner’s technique and his specific choices of such recurring motifs as pearls, pixels, and pustules run through the series, setting a tone for a sci-fi scenery in which rot comes with glamour, horror, and humor.
Tim Brawner, Harlow (2024). Acrylic on canvas, 48 x 36 in. Courtesy of the artist and Management, New York.
Looking at the paintings, the concepts of “Gothic Materialism” and “Cybernetic Theory-Fiction”—both introduced by Mark Fisher in Flatline Constructs—come to mind. “Gothic Materialism” denotes capitalism as an eerie, undead system, while “Cybernetic Theory-Fiction” explores how speculative fiction, sci-fi, and horror expose the dissolution of human agency under late capitalism. Reality is framed as a cybernetic network, trapping subjectivity in feedback loops of control. [3]
Brawner is intended “to explore the resentments and paranoia within class and generational divides,” presenting a realism shaped by a generation that has sobered up from the illusion of the ever-elusive “American Dream.” Through the tools of mannerism and kitsch, the paintings transform into ironic or dystopian reflections of consciousness—a satire of a bygone era.
Installation view of Tim Brawner: Last Caress. Photo: installshots.art. Courtesy of the artist and Management, New York.
In his theory of the gaze, Lacan suggests that painting redirects and protects, rather than merely exposes, the artist to the gaze of the other. The gaze unsettles because it reveals our objectification, shaping our sense of self. In Philosophy of Care, Boris Groys suggests that “by producing artworks, artists try to redirect the gaze of the other from their own bodies to the body of their work—and thus to disarm the evil, harmful gaze of the spectator.” [4] Brawner consciously employs this strategy, referring to it as “weirding.” This technique extends to his subjects—chimera-like figures between the monstrous and the human. Inspired by postwar horror comics and Hollywood history, the paintings depict imaginary film stills based on fantasy and true crime stories.
In Harlow, a tragic vanitas scene unfolds: a beautiful woman, her face in decay, gazes agonizingly into a mirror. This image might reference actress Jean Harlow, whose early death at 26 was preceded by a botched dental procedure, subsequent infections, and a fatal kidney failure. Sybil presents the aftermath of a car crash—flames, a lifeless body, and a shocked woman staring into the distance. It could just as easily be an apocalyptic movie scene as a routine accident reportage.
Tim Brawner, Sybil (2024). Acrylic on canvas, 60 x 60 in. Courtesy of the artist and Management, New York.
Brawner’s compositions alternate between close-ups and long shots. The use of unconventional angles and unexpected installation placements reinforces their cinematic quality. As a monstrous hand drops an ice cube into a glass of spirit (Kay), a sphynx cat crawls out for a caress (Ichy), a cat-eyed woman glimpses into a car mirror (Layle), a woman lighting up the darkness of a haunted house holding a candle and a gun in her hand (Rita), a clear gendered aspect reveals itself: the subjects allude to a female presence. This choice is deliberate and cannot be dismissed as arbitrary.
As the exhibition unfolds, the gaze becomes increasingly charged, even perverse. It echoes Susan Sontag’s notion of photographic seeing as a form of sexual voyeurism—transforming the depicted female subject into an object while simultaneously distancing the viewer. [5] Yet the paintings catch us off guard. Through their social commentary on neoliberalism and the conditions of late capitalism, they challenge the passive act of looking and confront us with the uncomfortable reality that we are not merely observers but active participants in this system.
Tim Brawner: Last Caress is on view at Management Gallery, New York, until February 23rd, 2025.
[1] Slavoj Žižek, “David Lynch as a Pre-Raphaelite,” E-Flux, January 17, 2025.
[2] Žižek.
[3] Mark Fisher, Flatline Constructs: Gothic Materialism and Cybernetic Theory-Fiction (New York, New York: Exmilitary Press, 2018).
[4] Boris Groys, Philosophy of Care (London ; New York: Verso, 2022), 116.
[5] Susan Sontag, On Photography (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1977).
