A number of benchmark paintings by THE CLAYTON BROTHERS (who worked collectively from 1996-2016) are now included in the Mark Moore Fine Art Exclusive Online Exhibition titled “Your Most Very Special Day – A Painting Survey” opening today and continuing through March 21st on the ARTSY site at the following link.
Image: Clayton Brothers, Joy Jelly Jump Junk, 2009 Mixed media on canvas 84 × 192 in (213.4 × 487.7 cm)
During a 20 year time span, The Clayton Brothers worked collectively and together from 1996 – 2016. Collaboration was more than a process: the concept of symbiosis resonated through every aspect of their paintings and installations. In a practice devoid of ego and restraint, the Clayton brothers developed intensely compacted narratives on an intuitive basis. They seldom worked on the same canvas at the same time, or discussed their projects during their creation. Playing off of a uniquely unspoken synergy, they took turns inventing, adding to, and editing each piece, propelling their “stories” through spontaneous improvisation. Entwining their independent approaches, styles, and palettes, their works operated as co-authored epics, fusing the concept of self with the communal.
Image: Clayton Brothers Mixed media on wood panel / 20 × 20 in
Working from their Los Angeles studio, the Clayton brothers drew inspiration from their immediate environment by incorporating local businesses, neighborhood regulars, and snippets of overheard conversations as subjects for their paintings. Composing their pieces in conjunction with one another, recurrent motifs, gestures, places, and figures appear within different works; creating the drama of linked experience. Set upon collaged canvases, the physical layers of their surfaces create a condensed tableaux. The brothers approached painting as a visual representation of pure energy: everyday scenes explode in vortexes of blinding color, movement is practically animated, and products make their placement, an effect similar to viewing every frame of a film simultaneously. In presenting a specific locality, the Clayton brothers relate the personal to the global, but still offer a vision of “America-as-it-is.” In turn, they celebrated and shared all of its diverse, spectacular, and solitary splendor.
An essay on the work of the Clayton Brothers by Michael Criley can be downloaded from our ARTSY Website at the following link.
Image: Clayton Brothers, Mixed media on canvas / 90 × 78 in
Rob (b. 1963, OH) and Christian (b. 1967, CO) Clayton both received their B.F.A.s from Art Center College of Design (CA). They have had solo exhibitions at the Pasadena Museum of California Art (CA), and the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art (WI) in addition to shows in Houston, New York, Beijing, Los Angeles, and Miami. Their work has also been included in shows at the Museum of the Moving Image (NY), Santa Monica Museum of Art (CA), Laguna Art Museum (CA), Kistler Beach Museum of Art (KS), Corcoran Museum of Art (DC), and the Dallas Museum of Art (TX), among others. They have also participated in more than twenty visiting artist lectures around the world, and their work appears in the collections of the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego (CA), Norton Museum of Art (FL), Sweeney Art Gallery at the University of California, Riverside (CA), and the Frederick R. Weisman Museum of Art (CA). The artists both live and work in Los Angeles, CA.
You can also download The Clayton Brothers free online STATEMENTS Catalog published by Mark Moore Fine Art featuring full color images of recent artworks, bio information, and a Q&A with the artist at the following link here.
An ARTSY feature on The Clayton Brothers last L.A. exhibition can be viewed here.
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