the ungainly progeny of Hannah Höch and a jumbo box of crayons, eric w. brenner uses collage, digital painting, and computer manipulation to drag surrealism kicking and screaming into the 21st century, where it belongs. his eerie, hypnotic portraits combine saturated hues with arcane geometric abstractions to create an atmosphere of uncanny familiarity and funhouse-mirror disquiet. he thinks artist’s statements are for losers whose art doesn’t speak for itself but he does enjoy writing about himself in the third person. eric lives and works in miami, florida, usa
obligatory artist’s statement appendix of influences: dada (especially max ernst and my beloved hannah höch), jack kirby, francis bacon, all those drugs i took in my 20s, andy warhol, technicolor, german expressionism, gustav klimt, batman, alice's adventures in wonderland, odilon redon, samurai films, leonora carrington, the way bob dylan sings “give me some milk or else go home” in ballad of a thin man, the brothers grimm, rene magritte, a sewing machine and an umbrella on an operating table, gerhard richter’s abstracts, ralph steadman, john coltrane on soprano, electric miles davis, grace kelly, looney tunes, anselm kiefer’s blowtorch, auden’s the two, “la beauté sera convulsive ou ne sera pas”, breughel’s triumph of death, shaw brothers, dale cooper, videodrome, monty python, mark rothko, tlön, uqbar, orbis tertius, malcolm mcdowell’s smirk in a clockwork orange, the tragedy of macbeth.