BRIAN “DOVIE” GOLDEN
Warning Signs
July 25, 2020 – August 15, 2020
Brian “Dovie” Golden is a visual artist who uses painting and drawing as an introspective tool for understanding issues of identity, race, gender and mental health, as well as an attempt to reconcile the harsh realities of life. His imagery is personal, incorporating realism through portraiture with cartoon style inclusions (aka his Fiends). The drawings depict angels, halos, devils, ropes and ribbons that bind and unwind, claws that cling, faces in crowds and huge teeth clamped like bear traps.
Golden was born and raised in Chicago and studied Graphic Design/Multimedia Production at the International Academy of Design and Technology, earning his BFA in 2007. Golden was awarded 1st Place at the Black Creativity Expo at the Museum of Science & Industry in Chicago in 2018 for his painting “Promises…Promises”. He currently lives and works in Chicago, continuing to expand his body of work through exhibitions, commissions and murals.
In Dovie’s latest exploration into the human spirit and experience, his life like portraits and menacing Fiends play a supporting role to the bold, angular shapes and arresting colors surrounding them. What does intuition look like? At first glance, we instinctively attempt to understand these shapes and colors, just as we do road signs. Only, the roads are our lives and lived experiences. And the hazards are the tempting, taunting Fiends that exist both within and around us.
Through this body of work, we are invited to consider the ways in which we sense their presence, and how this innate power lends us insight and foresight into our surroundings and the road ahead.
