Alex Brewer

Alex Brewer, also known as HENSE, is an American contemporary artist, best known for his dynamic, vivid and colorful abstract paintings and monumental wall pieces.[1][2] He has been active since the 1990s. In 2002 he began accepting commissions for artwork and over the course of the last decade has established a solid reputation as a commissioned artist, having appeared in several solo and group shows.


Although part of the legitimate art world for a decade, he is not apologetic about his years spent as a graffiti artist, as he feels this informs his current work.

Early Years

Brewer was born and raised in Atlanta.[3] He began doing graffiti at the age of 13 under the name HENSE and was so prolific at it that he earned what graffiti artists call “all-city status” by having left tags in practically every neighborhood in the city.[3]

Education

Brewer graduated from Grady High School in Atlanta. He attended Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond for a semester, but dropped out to pursue his calling as a graffiti artist.[3]

Grounding in Graffiti

Brewer developed his skill for graffiti in the mid to late '90s and early 2000s. At this time the city had a handful of “legal walls”, such as the Civic Yard at Peachtree and Pine streets, where graffiti artists could display their work. However, in 2003 Atlanta passed an anti-graffiti ordnance that made it illegal to paint private murals on public property without approval from the city.

Artwork

Brewer has produced a number of interior and exterior works around the world for both public institutions and private companies.

His largest installation to date is The ISIL Institute in Lima, Peru amassing a size of 40 meters (137 feet) tall and 50 meters (170 feet) wide.[4][5][6] The PUBLIC 2015/Northam Silos, a site-specific mural installation on the CBH Group grain silos, curated by FORM and funded by FORM and the CBH Group in Northam, Western Australia measures 36 meters (118 feet) tall and 11 meters (36 feet) wide.[7]

One of Brewer's stated highest honors was a commission by the High Museum of Art in Atlanta to produce a site-specific installation as part of the museum's summer exhibition, Drawing Inside the Perimeter.[1][8] He also created two original installations at the Museum of Design Atlanta (MODA), for the Skate It or Hang It?! Exhibition, which illustrate the impact that skateboarding art has made on his work.[9]

In addition, he has commissioned work at Apple Inc, including a site-specific mural commissioned for new retail store barricade, along with artwork created for limited edition products, commissioned by Apple Inc, in Miami, FL.[10] He also has work at Facebook Inc, including a site-specific mural commissioned for Facebook Global Headquarters, in a building designed by Frank Gehry, commissioned by Facebook Inc, in Menlo Park, CA. In addition to several works at companies including Aol, B2 Studios (Alton Brown's test kitchen and studio), Big Nerd Ranch, Hilton Hotels, King & Spalding, DLA Piper, Novartis, Tuner Broadcasting's Adult Swim, Cartoon Network, and PRPL Digital Creative Agency.

Style

Brewer’s free-form paintings and public mural installations use a combination of abstract lines, shapes and organic forms. His work has been described as fluid and playful and as an explosion of pastels.[9]

Michael Rooks, the curator of modern and contemporary art at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, said: "HENSE combines the quick pace and point-of-view of street culture with tumultuous compositions often characterized by highly keyed color, vertiginous line and biomorphic shapes."[1]

"The artist thinks of his recent works on panel as a form of collage, in which, as he describes, he adds and subtracts different forms until the work feels finished. The results could be described as an elegantly choreographed cacophony, in which loosely geometric forms jostle one another and, in some of his paintings, rub up against kaleidoscopic patches of pigment. At their generous size, these works engulf viewers, sweeping us up in their visual rhythms—in which you just might detect the pulse of the street."[11]

Controversy

On April 1, 2011, Brewer and several other local Atlanta graffiti artists were sued for $1 million by a pair of Edgewood Avenue property owners.[12] Brewer and several legitimate artists have countersued saying they had nothing to do with the work that they are being sued for.[13] Another article describes the shift as ironic: "the same people the city had once paid officers to lock up were now receiving commissions from city coffers." [14]

Solo Exhibitions

Group Exhibitions

Commissions

Public Art Projects

Grants and Awards

Reviews and Publications

Public Speaking Engagements

References

  1. 1 2 3 Alex Brewer - HENSE “Internationally recognized contemporary public artist and award-winning painter Alex Brewer, known as HENSE, has been creating colorful works of art combining techniques of street art and abstract painting for nearly two decades."
  2. ↑ HENSE | WideWalls "Alex Brewer aka HENSE is an American contemporary artist, best known for his dynamic, vivid and colorful abstract paintings and monumental wall pieces."
  3. 1 2 3 Debbie Michaud Stop Making HENSE Creative Loafing Atlanta, Sept 14 2012
  4. ↑ HENSE - The largest mural in Lima by MORBO - Google Cultural Institute
  5. ↑ HENSE's Biggest Mural Yet Completed in Lima
  6. ↑ HENSE: lima installation
  7. ↑ International art project sprouts on side of grain silos in WA's Wheatbelt Mar 27, 2015
  8. ↑ Drawing Inside the Perimeter High Museum of Art Atlanta. Past Exhibitions. June 29 - September 22, 2013
  9. 1 2 CBS Atlanta June 23, 2012
  10. ↑ Apple Retail Store - HENSE Mural at Lincoln Road
  11. ↑ Alex Brewer (aka HENSE) Channels the Rhythm of the Streets in New Graffiti-Inspired Paintings Artsy Editorial, Karen Kedmey, Nov 3, 2015, 9:31 PM
  12. ↑ Wyatt Williams A Few Questions With Hense April 5, 2011
  13. ↑ Street artists, taggers in graffiti lawsuit strike back with counterclaims Atlanta Journal Constitution. May 9, 2011
  14. ↑ The reinvention of HENSE - How the Atlanta graffiti artist went legit and became a global art star myAJC. Sep 20, 2015
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