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 glenn brown
 to access audio and video on collective you need real player.Taking the rough with the smooth at London’s Serpentine Gallery. Glenn Brown must be a strange man. Repainting other people’s pictures in meticulous detail then calling them his own. Spending weeks on hardcore sci-fi dreamscapes, “after” artists like Tony Roberts and Chris Foss – big beer in photorealist geekworld, apparently – only to end up with a replica of the original, but painted by ex-Turner Prize nominee, Glenn Brown. Then there are the Old Masters. Figures from Rembrandt and rococo flirt Jean-Honoré Fragonard, redone in sickly sulphurous colours and given titles like Death Disco or They Threw Us All In A Pit And Built A Monument On Top (Parts 1 And 2). All of them with Brown’s trademark supersmooth surface, making them look like photographs. Which is part of the point. Imagine thick, trowelled-on expressionist heads flattened out but blurring at the edges, as if the decrepit face staring out at you like Norman Bates’ mother dolled up for a date actually exists somewhere in three dimensions. Hopefully a long, long way away. It’s a disturbing thought, and one which creeps up on you as you walk around the exhibition. Especially when confronted by sculptures like Three Wise Virgins (2004), which are everything the paintings aren’t. Monstrous impasto slugs slowed to a halt by their own bodyweight. Quick, pass the salt. Glenn Brown is at the Serpentine Gallery, London, until 07 November 04.
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