DANIEL BRUSH
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A gold and steel 'Cobra piece', 1992...
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A pure gold and steel 'Scroll Rest', 1995...
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Six gold and steel 'Stones', 1995-1996...
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A pure gold, steel and iron 'Slider', 1996...
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A pure gold and steel 'Scholar's Table #10', 1996...
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A pure gold and steel 'Shell Box', 1996...
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A pure gold and steel 'Side' , 1997...
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A pure gold and steel 'Scholar's Table #5', 2001...
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A pure gold and steel 'For Galla Placidia #1', 2001...
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A blued steel and gold 'Blue Scholar 2' sculpture, 2002...
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A pure gold and steel 'Scholar's Table #9', 2002...
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A steel and gold 'Tungsten, for Oliver' sculpture, 2010...
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A pure gold and steel 'Morning/Night' wall sculpture, 2010...
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A pure gold and steel 'Sharp Edge' sculpture, 2012...
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A steel 'Pocket', 2019...
Daniel Brush displays a mastery of material that wordlessly communicates to the viewer the dedication with which he approaches his art. Be it in his early canvas paintings and works on paper, or in the later three-dimensional works in metal, an almost monastic reverence to process permeates the unparalleled body of work that Brush has created over the last fifty years. The meditative repetition of lines in his drawings are echoed in the painstakingly carved ridges of his metalwork sculptures. Their hand-carved lines, upon forms that evoke something between a monolith and a meteorite, read like scriptural landscapes. An echo of the philosophies of Asian masters can be traced in these foundations, with Brush having spoken of his admiration for the “expressive, disciplined gestures of Noh theatre” and an echo of the philosophies of Asian masters in his work is a reflection of these principles having been absorbed not only by his artistic expression but his very way of life.
It is however in gold that Brush found the calling that shapes his most iconic three-dimensional work. It is a material that has been in mankind’s lexicon since ancient civilisations, and Brush absorbed himself in scholarly seclusion for fifteen years in a quest to understand this. Understanding can be a flippant word however it is given profundity in the mouth of a man who strove to personally understand this material until it became not only a language in which he is fluent but that he speaks with the mastery of a mother tongue. In exploring its alloys, its tools (recreating techniques lost since antiquity) and redefining its relationship with other materials such as steel, ivory and earth magnets, Brush found new depths of expression and created visual poems that can be found in private collections, museums and royal collections around the world.
A reclusive character with a small production, it is rare to see a substantial collection of Daniel Brush’s work outside of museums (Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art, The Smithsonian, The Victoria & Albert Museum etc.. ). A retrospective at the Smithsonian in 1998, an exhibition at The Museum of Arts and Design in 2012/2013 entitled ‘Daniel Brush: Blue Steel Gold Light’ and a dedicated exhibition of Brush’s jewellery ‘Cuffs and Necks’ at L’Ecole Van Cleef & Arpels in 2018 have been rare glimpses into a man whose life and art stand apart from any definable time or artistic movement.