Lawrence Brose

Lawrence Brose is a Buffalo, N.Y.-based experimental filmmaker, photographer, and arts administrator. Hisfilms have been shown at international festivals, museums, art galleries, and cinematheques in the United States, Europe, Asia, Australia, and South America. Brose held the position of executive director of CEPA Gallery in Buffalo from 1999 to 2009. [1]

In 1989 he began work on FILM for MUSIC for FILM, an ambitious series of collaborations with contemporary composers exploring the relationship between the moving image and music. (Among his collaborators on the project were John Cage, Virgil Thomson, Conlon Nancarrow, Yvar Mikhashoff, and Frederic Rzewski.) His1997 film De Profundis, a 65-minute hand- processed work based on Oscar Wilde's prison letter with an original score by Rzewski, has been screened at more than sixty venues and festivals worldwide. In an artist’s statement, Brose described his work as “cinepoems which build on the vertical layering of experiences rather than a more linear structure familiar to the narrative form.” [2]

An unidentified observer later provided this explanation of the artist’s aesthetic: “Lawrence Brose is working in a well-established tradition of image appropriation, drawing specifically on images of masculinity in home movies, old films, Gay erotica and documentaries. Brose collects found still images, which he then processes and re-processes to find more depth in the picture, producing complex layers of imagery that are highly conceptual and offer a poignant commentary on normative conventions of gender and sexuality.” [3]

Brose’s prints are part of several private collections and have been exhibited at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, CEPA, Big Orbit, Studio Hart Gallery, and El Museo Francisco Oller y Diego Rivera in Buffalo, NY; Triskel Arts Centre, Cork, Ireland; Jack Tilton Gallery, New York City; and Fosdick-Nelson Gallery, Alfred University. He has been invited to place his films and career-related documents on deposit at the George Eastman House, Rochester, New York as part of their permanent collection.

For more information on Lawrence Brose, visit lawrencebrose.com.

[1] Biographical information adapted from http://lawrencebroselegaldefensefund.com/index.php?/ongoing/about-lawrence/. (Accessed 9/11/2014)

[2] “Artist’s statement,” http://lawrencebroselegaldefensefund.com/index.php?/ongoing/about-lawrence/. (Accesed 9/11/2014)

[3] http://lawrencebroselegaldefensefund.com/index.php?/project/case-for-support/. (Accessed 9/12/2014)