PLATO

Deborah Brown’s kaleidoscopic spotlight on NYC’s neighborhoods and micro-communities came as a surprise for the artist herself, a New Yorker of forty-two years who rediscovered her own city during the pandemic. From Brown’s shadow on the deserted streets near her studio in East Williamsburg, which she then wandered around with her long-time canine companion, Trout, to the later revived sidewalks of Bushwick and Tribeca, where street vendors lure locals and tourists with their colorful wares of imported merchandize, to Chinatown’s sensory overload of fishmonger’s vitrines, makeshift stalls, red-and-yellow signs and glowing restaurant lights, to Ecuadorian fruit sellers on the L train platform at Union Square, to starchitect Frank Gehry’s skyscraper foregrounded by street food carts, to Brooklyn stray cats to Upper East Side dog walkers – the sights, sounds and characters of the grand metropolis invigorated Brown’s practice, infusing it with an electrifyingly exciting palette and a bravado brushwork that is fresh and spontaneous, but only achievable with decades-long experience.