Lot Essay
Painted in 2005, Brett Cody Rogers's Untitled appears like a crystalline palimpsest. Numerous layers of paint have been superimposed upon one another, creating a dynamic and alluringly colourful work that reveals Rogers's virtuosic control of the brush. Building up the canvas with translucent washes, the transparent nature of the paint allows light to penetrate and refract through it, and so the overlapping marks produce a third colour. Executed soon after Rogerss completion of his MFA at the California Institute of Arts in 2004, the work reveals the influence of the Los Angeles cityscape on his artistic practice. He has drawn quite directly on architectural details and gestures that he encountered in the city around him, and from the refined yet commonplace schemes of Modernist buildings which are so prevalent in Los Angeles. Taking this as a starting point, he then translates it into his own unique and instantly recognisable abstract artistic style that creates an almost hallucinogenic experience in its brilliant visual intensity.