Kevin Brisco Jr. is the cover artist for the forthcoming Home issue (Fall 2024). Brisco’s exhibition It’s My House and I Lived Here is on view at albertz benda Los Angeles, October 4–November 22, 2024.

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The home, your home, our home, their home, the space which allows many of us to be our true selves and bears witness to the most intimate experiences of our lives. From intense happiness and peace of mind to tragedy and consternation, the home holds many multiplicities at once. This home, the place we go when we turn inward, is not only a physical but mental space; it is a feeling, a collection of memories, and a sanctuary where one finds introspection and understanding of one’s own life. The singular area in our lives which holds both physical and mental spaces simultaneously and allows us to recall both tears of joy and sadness, the embodiment of one’s own history. The place in which our stories unfold, where we retreat for respite from our day’s labor, and where the walls hold and echo our histories each time we return. In its embrace, we find our true selves, shaped by the experiences and connections that turn a house or region into a home, and moreover our singular mental space into our inner home and sanctuary. A passage from East Coker in T. S. Eliot’s Four Quartets poetically outlines the non-linear and sometimes abstract presence the home plays within our lives.

Home is where one starts from. As we grow older
the world becomes stranger, the pattern more complicated
Of dead and living. Not the intense moment
Isolated, with no before and after,
But a lifetime burning in every moment
And not the lifetime of one man only
But of old stones that cannot be deciphered.
There is a time for the evening under starlight,
A time for the evening under lamplight
(The evening with the photograph album).

It is in our domestic spaces, often overlooked in their everyday familiarity, that our lives, behaviors, and sense of identity are grown and molded over time. From our childhood homes to college dorm rooms, in our first apartments and eventual house purchases, these spaces become the backdrops of our most intimate moments, routines, and memories. They shape the trajectories of our habits and sentimentality for the rest of our lives. They are where we rest, nurture, and build relationships and communities; where we display creative expression and love through décor, photographs of loved ones, and artworks by children, friends, and family; where we erect shrines to favorite sports teams and stock shelves of keepsakes, trinkets, and heirlooms. The layout of these domestic spaces significantly influences how we live and what we share with visitors, underscoring our approach to hospitality.

By the same token, domestic spaces are deeply intertwined with larger cultural and social practices. In many cultures, the home is a symbol of stability and success, reflecting the values and aspirations of its occupants and the generations that came before them. The concept of domestic space has evolved in response to social, economic, and technological changes amid personal challenges. In the past, homes were often multifunctional and places for communal gathering, from regular holiday gatherings to block parties and weekend cookouts. More recently, in the wake of a global pandemic, rapidly changing techno-social access points, such as video calls, social media, and remote work, have increasingly blurred the once clearly defined boundaries of home and work life, and more incipiently, public and private life. The home has been hybridized—serving as both classroom and playroom, lover’s suite and public forum—where living and working must coexist. 

Domestic and homelike spaces have been ever-present subjects in modern and contemporary art, from Pierre Bonnard’s gestural and psychological interiors depicting moments of the intimate mundane, Henri Matisse’s brightly colored studio scenes as glimpses of the rare self-portrait, and Romare Bearden’s geometric collages of bustling Harlem blocks and morning breakfast scenes in North Carolina to Carrie Mae Weems’s emotive Kitchen Table Series of photographs, examining the wide range of life events in a singular home space. Each of these artists depict their own self-reflection and lived experience within their homes. Kevin Brisco Jr.’s pensive and cerebral paintings join that art historical lineage to bring about a certain sense of familiarity within a shared past for viewers. A series of intimate landscapes and portraits drenched in shadows like faint memories, Brisco’s technique relies heavily on his and the model’s own life experiences, using synthetism to create individual vignettes and snapshots of broader memories, akin to Paul Gauguin or Pierre Bonnard. The practice of Synthetism refers to a technique in which artists blend natural elements with scenes they have directly observed. Instead of accurately reproducing reality, artists rely on memory to create symbolic interpretations of those experiences. The scenes and symbols in Brisco’s recent works expand upon his own personal reflections of place and home, sharing narratives with previous works. His practice of sowing throughlines in his studio practice strengthens not only his own recollections but allows the artist, the viewers, and the subjects to uncover deeper personal memories while also exploring a shared human existence. His collaging of memories allows for a sequencing of relatable life events, evoking both broad and granular memories for viewers and illustrating so adeptly our shared history of singular experiences. 

This recalls Gaston Bachelard’s The Poetics of Space, where the writer examines the philosophies surrounding the innate memories and experiences held within the confines of our personal and shared spaces. Bachelard writes, “We comfort ourselves by reliving memories of protection. Something closed must retain our memories, while leaving them their original value as images. Memories of the outside world will never have the same tonality as those of home and, by recalling these memories, we add to our store of dreams; we are never real historians, but always near poets, and our emotion is perhaps nothing but an expression of a poetry that was lost. Thus, by approaching the house images with care not to break up the solidarity of memory and imagination, we may hope to make others feel all the psychological elasticity of an image that moves us at an unimaginable depth. Through poems, perhaps more than through recollections, we touch the ultimate poetic depth of the space of the house.”¹ Brisco, too, focuses on the personal, emotional, and poetic echoes of the home in this recent body of work, and how those echoes imprint on people throughout their lives. 

Brisco’s brilliance of technique in capturing the interplay of light and shadow allows his pieces to radiate and glow on their own, drawing attention to the subtle and nuanced details, thus evoking sentiments of nostalgia and recollection blurred by faint familiarity. Don’t Forget, an image of a green-hued deadbolt lock, and Discipline, depicting a cool blue-toned snippet of a leather belt being removed, are both vignettes depicting fractions of a second in time and, paired together, they elicit memories of consequences for tasks undone, such as leaving the door unlocked. A singular act which allowed the home to become vulnerable and open for invasion, losing heirlooms or, most importantly, that precious sense of safety within the confines of the home. Even more simply, the piece Discipline stands as an eerie reminder of how and why some habits have formed, and lessons learned the hard way. 

Brisco’s excellence as a painter shines in these works not only by way of technique but also in his ability to examine the overlooked and banal moments of daily life and the cerebral space such moments occupy throughout our lives. Much like Tracey Emin’s powerful portrayal of her struggles in My Bed, 1998 , where she revealed the most intimate details of her bedroom as a sculpture, confronting prolonged episodes of manic depression, Brisco’s paintings serve as poignant documentation of some of life’s most sensitive periods, perhaps overlooked as prosaic in the very moment but having a lasting ripple effect in memory. 

Brisco’s paintings of domestic spaces emote familiarity and evoke questions of contrast and around relationship dynamics more broadly, akin to Carrie Mae Weems’s Kitchen Table Series. In Weems’s historic and critically acclaimed photographic series, she examines two avenues of the domestic the landscape: the physical and the mental spaces of home. She successfully pushes the boundary of a singular space in her own home, the kitchen, to depict a wide range of emotions and happenings within that one room. The series questions preconceived notions of what the kitchen represents—a social space for friends, family, and community, and, even more intimately, a space to have difficult discussions regarding home dynamics, such as finances, romance, political issues, familial tensions, and moments alone. Brisco’s Efforts is a delicate and warm piece that reminds us that our time together is to be nurtured, that even the slightest effort or smallest gesture, such as a single fresh cut rose waiting on the kitchen table, can go a long way with a partner. This work further underscores how certain utilitarian spaces in the home, such as the kitchen table, can also act as a meeting ground for commonality, negotiation, and grievance.  

In their respective work, both Brisco and Weems consider the social constructs of the home and domestic space, but equally ask the viewer to consider how we alter the domestic space, our living arrangements, and the correlated social contract via our shared lived experience, including how external factors weigh on our day-to-day lives. Two of Brisco’s paintings, Motion Sensors and Neighborhood Watch, explore the concepts of surveillance and intrusion in a community. They explore how glances shared through a plume of cigarette smoke on a front porch can feel either intimidating to outsiders or reassuring to neighbors, knowing their block is constantly on watch, and how the subtle angle of a neighbor’s motion-detector lights can intrude upon intimate moments as they shine through your window. The jarring nature of a shadowy figure on a front porch or bright unexpected lights shining into your window invite a momentary internal questioning: Is our safety in jeopardy? Will there be a knock on the door from an unfamiliar person? Is your partner simply coming home late from work? Did the neighbors carelessly, or purposefully, aim their lights at our windows? Those interactions and internal questions of intent and effect, permeate the physical and mental landscape of our homes and remain with us as reminders that all too often the spaces that we think of as wholly ours and under a protective membrane—our private space and time—is so fragile and easily penetrated.  

Demons Done Got His Ass is a composite of vignettes highlighting mid-century modern architecture and furnishings and a radiating inferno-like vista with a single exhausted figure at center, giving uncanny reminders of the toll an unexpected heatwave can have on one’s mental endurance. You can almost hear the deep breath and sigh of the figure as he sits down at the kitchen table—the heart of the home—to take a beat and think through how to navigate his thoughts. The work exemplifies just how fragile home life is when unexpected intrusion and seizure happens. As temperatures rise and heat waves encroach, the home is supposed to be a secure and safe space for retreat; however, when the air conditioner burns out and there is nowhere else to go, that place becomes a cage of frustration, worry, and anxiety. The home turns from a sanctuary where your mind can wander blissfully to become a place of bewilderment, dread, and exhaustion as one stares ahead to the list of tasks that come with remedying a problem. While our homes are more often than not places of sanctuary, they are also a place of responsibility and arenas that require our attention to manage circumstances beyond our control. Demons Done Got His Ass parallels Pierre Bonnard’s Dining Room on the Garden, 1934–35 in that both works exemplify a certain sense of solace within the home—the dining room, specifically—with the figures depicted in each work exuding exasperation, fatigue, and a longing to be elsewhere.

Ultimately, domestic spaces are not simply physical structures, they are dynamic environments that reflect our identities, lifestyles, habits, and relationships. It is in these spaces where we create memories, find comfort, and express our individuality. As such, understanding the significant impact of domestic spaces allows us to appreciate the lasting weight they hold within our lives and the ways in which they shape our view of the world. Brisco’s ability to depict the dualities of emotion and memory held within a single space through vignettes of vaguely familiar snapshots is unmatched. He is able to typify notions of hope and loss or anxiety and serenity within the same painting. His work reveals the profoundly cerebral nature of home life when reflected upon without external pressures. He emphasizes the importance of living in a space where time is your own, while also allowing shared moments to accumulate into a life well-lived. Brisco joins the cannon of modern and contemporary artists who seek to allegorize an intersectional and multilayered life experience, one marked by deep reflection and the valuing of singular and collective moments as indexical to one another.

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This essay was originally published by albertz benda gallery. It has been slightly condensed and edited.

Kevin Brisco Jr. (b. 1990, Memphis, Tennessee) earned his BA from Wesleyan University in 2013 and his MFA from Yale University in 2020. He has exhibited nationally and internationally at galleries including: albertz benda, New York; Union Pacific, London; TONE, Memphis, Tennessee; Contemporary Art Center, New Orleans; Perrotin, New York; Rumpelstiltskin Gallery, Brooklyn; Sevil Dolmaci Gallery, Istanbul; Antenna Gallery, New Orleans. He is the recipient of numerous grants and was awarded artist-in-residence fellowships at the Fine Art Works Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts, The Macedonia Institute in Chatham, New York, and the Vermont Studio Center in Johnson, Vermont. Brisco lives and works in Austin, Texas.

Aaron Levi Garvey is a Jewish-American Curator and Historian specializing in Modern and Contemporary Arts and Culture and currently serves as Director of the Art Museum of West Virginia University. He has worked with esteemed institutions, including as the Janet L. Nolan director of curatorial affairs at the Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art at Auburn University, founding chief curator of The Hudson Eye and Long Road Projects Foundation, and chief curator of the Andy Warhol Museum.

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