The Body Snatchers 1991

Glenn Brown conjured "The Body Snatchers," sometime after he was born in 1966, using thick daubs of paint and a warped sensibility. This is an image that doesn't quite settle, does it? Up close, the surface is a riot of textures – peaks and troughs of oil paint create a topography as unnerving as the subject matter. Look at the way Brown manipulates the paint around the eye sockets, building up layers to create these grotesque hollows. It's as if he's excavating the face, revealing something unsettling beneath the surface. The colors are lurid and nauseating, not quite matching up to the forms they describe. Brown’s kind of a magpie. He pulls from the past, twists it, and spits it out anew. Here, I am reminded of Francis Bacon's distorted portraits. But, where Bacon’s works are immediate and visceral, Brown's paintings are more like ghostly afterimages, lingering in the mind long after you've turned away. Like a visual earworm, these images get under your skin and start to mess with your sense of reality.