This spring, Meantime Co. has invited William Eric Brown to make an exhibition of neon sculptures and books, particularly “the book,” which Brown has been working on for decades. “The book” is an assembly of drawings, photographs, and mixed media, bound accordion style, which, when stretched, extends over 100 feet. It is a digest of iconography and color and is a sculpture just as much as it is a book. Recurrent throughout the book and the other works in the exhibition are images pertaining to air travel. 

Having lived all over the world, Brown finds it difficult to tell you where he is from- and while others are discomforted by it, Brown is at ease in transit. Being somewhere is as much a state of mind as it is a physical experience. Airports and planes are in-between places where everyone is nowhere. Once you pass through security, you are in a transitional space- and have given up control over your body. While you may have been planning for months to go where you are going, it is truly not up to you, your destination is a desire, at the mercy of mechanics and nature.

Brown has carried “the book” with him all over. The pages are assembled from various sketchbook pages and collage elements that he has been accumulating, the book is a guide to comprehending the artist’s influences and creative process. The accordion binding allows for it to be stretched out so that both sides of the pages are visible and it can be doubled over itself to afford limitless juxtapositions of imagery-like a wormhole, folding time back onto itself.  The ordering of the pages is dictated not by chronology but by formal and conceptual criteria- yet nothing is ever fixed, and Brown often takes the book apart and reconfigures it making new pictorial associations. It is all chapters of a life in art, built to evolve, with no destination in sight. 

William Eric Brown lives and works in New York City. He was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1969. In 1992 Brown received a BFA from the University of Southern Maine, and in 1996 an MFA from The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Brown is multifaceted in his practice, and from 2020-2021, operated Sala Projects with collaborator Manuela Mozo. Sala Projects was conceived to be an exhibition space whose program was devoted to highlighting exceptional, underrepresented artists. In addition to making paintings, sculptures, photographs, and installation work- Brown has also produced a large body of artists' books, several of which are to be included in this presentation. Titles include A Sentence for the Sun, with text  by Tom Melick, published by Stolon Press, Sydney January 2022; Visitor, 2021, a unique artists book, and Fever Dreams, 2019, four unique artists books printed on frosted mylar.   Recent and notable solo and group exhibitions of Brown’s work include, ATKA, Arts Center at Duck Creek, East Hampton, NY, upcoming in July 2023, and in 2021ColorStatic, at the National Arts Club, New York, NY, and See You on the Other Side at 601 Artspace in New York. Brown's work is included in the collection of the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, MN, and numerous private collections. Further information can be found at www.williamericbrown.com.