Justin Liam O’brien “Dreams”

Monya Rowe Gallery

This event has ended.

Monya Rowe Gallery presents a solo exhibition of new paintings by Justin Liam O’Brien titled Dreams.

Dreaming is like cruising the back alleys of our mind. Images are dredged up and spooled into a nightly film, passing uneasily, erotically, from one to another.
A memory is actually not a recollection of a given moment, but rather a recollection of the last time it was remembered. An infinite regression. An endless game of telephone in the mind in which we have no say.

Dreams and memories are retained and discarded at random, regardless of how much we’d like to forget one or remember another. I believe that considering what has been retained or lost has the potential to reveal deeper relational facts about our lives. This has been of particular interest to me recently.
There’s something inherently sexy about having dreams, something ineffable in remembering. They are pure reflections of you, soaked in your deepest feelings. Feelings you might be terrified to feel, or might have been yearning to feel for years.

Recollection is cruising your own mind. Picking memories up like a guy at a bar. Making eyes with your dreams.
- Justin Liam O’Brien, Brooklyn, 2021

Justin Liam O’Brien (b. 1991, Flushing, NY) received a BFA from Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY and an AS in Visual Arts from SUNY Suffolk, Selden, NY. Recent exhibitions include Grimm, Amsterdam; Richard Heller Gallery, LA; Galerie LJ, Paris, and Monya Rowe Gallery, NY. O’Brien’s work has been reviewed in Juxtapoz, Artforum, and Gayletter, among others. This is the artists’ second solo exhibition at Monya Rowe Gallery. O’Brien lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.