In the aftermath of World War II – and the cataclysmic effects of the atomic bomb – pop culture was awash with exaggerated stories of violence and anomie, as seen in a slew of detective and horror comics to success whose exaggerated threads led to the birth of the Comics Code Authority censorship. The legacy of the grotesque in comics and its relationship to contemporary art is complex and twisted, but painter Tim Brawner admits he was influenced by 1950s EC Comics publications such as Tales from the Crypt And Mad magazine – as well as the illustrator Basil Wolverton (1909-1978), whose grossly exaggerated mutant characters, created in pen and ink, were unrivaled in their visceral fabulousness.
Brawner expands on that legacy with his acrylic-on-canvas images here, such as The Escape III (all works 2023), which depicts the tightly cropped face of a distressed man clutching the steering wheel of a car. A range of Cimmerian blues are accentuated by small dots of white paint that shimmer across the surface, giving this runaway blackish man, whose oversized eyes reveal both terror and despair, an uncomfortably vivid appearance.
Brawner also cites an underground and former comic heavy metal Richard Corben (1940-2020) – known for his Grand Guignol airbrushed fantasy and horror stories – as an influence, which dovetails with that of Brawner character head 2: Subject’s gruesome, rotten teeth, bulging eyes, and orange pallor exude Evil Dead 2 vibes. The artist’s fetishistic approach to detail is perhaps best exemplified by Semiochemistry, one of the few pieces here that deviates from the painter’s monochrome palette. The canvas depicts a macabre being with pointy ears feasting on an array of foods in supernatural, hypersaturated colors. In the foreground a large insect flies amid the candlelight – the image looks like a scene from a 70s Hammer film. Brawner’s abject, fantastical and nightmarish visions, while grotesque, are surely not no more monstrous than reality.
