Casper Brindle’s paintings are explorations of the expressive possibilities of color, light and form. His palette ranges from spectacularly technicolor to subtly monochromatic, but ever present is the notion of center. Whether it’s a striking, hard-edge horizon line running through the painting or a metallic bar floating on the surface, there is always a form that pulls us deeper into the imagery that Brindle presents.
A contemporary disciple of the 1960s & 70s Light and Space generation, Brindle too is intrigued by the sensory experiences triggered by color and light. His expansive paintings shift and morph as the viewer walks past them, compelling them to pause and begin to explore the enigmatic spaces of perception. Brindle has referred to the process in which he creates his works as trance-like, and one can’t help but notice the meditative quality these paintings induce.
Brindle’s work has clear ties to the materiality of the Finish Fetish and Light and Space movements, and his masterful use of color invokes the emotive qualities of painters like Mark Rothko and Jules Olitski. However, Brindle synthesizes sensibilities from these disparate movements and creates something entirely his own. Brindle’s paintings envelop the viewer in expansive fields that not only delight the senses, but have the power to elicit deeper emotional responses. Utilizing tools and techniques adopted from Southern California’s distinctive car culture, Brindle applies fine layers of airbrushed sprays to create atmospheric gradations of subtle depth. In his early works, Brindle often embedded glowing tubes of LEDs in his paintings, but he has now managed to harness the effect of light solely with color.
Born in Toronto in 1968, Brindle’s family relocated to Los Angeles in 1974, and he has called the city home ever since. Growing up surfing the beaches of LA’s coast undoubtedly made a profound impact on the artist. Brindle started painting as a teen and in his early twenties, he apprenticed for the pioneering Light and Space artist, Eric Orr.
Casper Brindle’s work has been exhibited across the United States and internationally. His work is held in a number of prominent private and museum collections including the Frederick R. Weisman Art Foundation and the Morningside College Collection in Sioux City, IA.
Dislocated Stratum Series
Utilizing tools and techniques adopted from the industrial complex of Southern California car culture, Brindle applies paint to the surface of his Dislocated Stratum paintings in multiple layers of fine airbrush sprays. The high gloss, resin finishes appear to liquify the shimmering stratums of color beneath and the effect is intoxicating. Atmospheric gradations of color are encased in hardened surfaces in a constant push and pull between depth, light and texture. Immersing the viewer into luminous, chromatic fields, these paintings transcend the representational suggestion of land and sea, evoking something more elemental, like vast & infinite horizons rushing across time and space.
Portal Series
The Portal Series is Brindle’s newest body of work - it evolved from the otherwordly, Aura paintings that he debuted in early 2017. Sharing the central form of an enigmatic bar of metallic leaf, the Portals diverge from their pearl-white predecessors with their richly saturated colors. Painted on linen rather than panel, the surfaces are stained with gradients that radiate from light to dark, as if the beacon-like central form is emitting light and pulsating with it. The nuanced application of paint invokes the meditative and emotional quality of Rothko, while the use of gold and silver leaf recall sacred Byzantine icon paintings. Color and structure become inseparable as the viewer is drawn deep into the picture plane, left to ponder the mysterious imagery that the artist has presented.
Aura Series
The Aura series are monochromatic pieces that bridge the space between painting and sculpture. They are more “object” than straightforward painting. Upon first glance they appear to have austere white surfaces. However, as the viewer moves around them, a nuanced depth becomes apparent as ghostly layers rise to the surface and new structures emerge. Reductive in nature, these objects have a totemic presence that inspires a quiet reverence. Wall mounted, these pearlescent pieces have an otherworldly quality - each painting is surrounded by a glowing halo of color, its reach extending beyond the surface onto the wall around it. At the center of each is an enigmatic, metallic rectangle enshrouded in a halo of pure white. These cryptic forms appear to be made from liquid metal.
Sculpture
In 2017, Brindle began producing large-scale kinetic sculptures that continue his experimentation with sensory perception. Using the same metallic automotive paints that he employs in his paintings, Brindle’s dynamic sculptures shift in color and appearance in response to the viewer’s position. They are intended to function outdoors as well as indoors.
Light Glyph and Portal Glyph series
A most ancient form of communication, a glyph is a symbol or mark carved in relief to convey ideas without words. Transformative and mysterious, Casper Brindle’s newest series, the Glyphs, continues his investigation into the expressive possibilities of color and form while utilizing new materials and modes of production. These enigmatic pieces tend more toward sculptural object than painting, each a single sheet of shimmering metallic color encased in a transparent shell, punctuated only by a radiant central form. These central forms seem to be emerging from the void, single origin points that simultaneously appear to be moving through space and frozen in time. A glowing push and pull ensues as the viewer circles the piece, the object before them shifting before their eyes. Meant to be experienced, they cause the viewer to question what they’re seeing while they’re looking.
This reductive imagery is powerful in its simplicity. The slim bar of neon color that cuts through the picture plane invites a quiet reverence, as form seems to materialize from the abyss, in an act of technicolor alchemy. Lucio Fontana’s powerful slashed canvases come to mind when regarding these works, in which form energetically cuts through space in an attempt to create a new dimension. Brindle’s work follows this trajectory, breaking from the traditional confines of paint and canvas, presenting the viewer with evocative imagery that alludes to something beyond the limits of our understanding.
Brindle combines repetition of form and brilliant swathes of pure color to create his visual language, which becomes a meditation on experience and perception. The rigidity of the hard-edge shapes and boundaries of the picture plane is softened by the use of unexpected and sensuous color. The confluence of these elements results in a sensation of boundless energy that seems to want to burst forth from the picture plane and extend ever outward through space, despite its confinement to the picture plane. The tension in these works presents the viewer with a series of intriguing dualities, they seem to float in the space between reality and illusion, the finite and the infinite.
In addition to the Light Glyphs, Brindle has been evolving his Portals series, a collection of large-scale paintings on linen. These new iterations, entitled Portal-Glyphs, are expanded in scale and complexity, monumental canvases covered in fields of lush color. Working within the constraints of unyielding ninety-degree angles, Brindle applies color with a Fauvist abandon, creating works with an otherworldly presence. Recurrent in his work is the cryptic central form, here appearing as metal foil bars enshrouded in gradients of color. It is a form that draws the viewer deeper into the illusory depths of the canvas, creating a point to which one can anchor and pause for a moment during the dizzying passing of time.
Casper Brindle
Los Angeles, CA
(b.1968)
Casper Brindle is a painter and sculptor working in mixed-media abstraction, light and space, and finish fetish. He lives and works in Los Angeles, CA.
SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2024
2023
Transcendent Matter, Nancy Toomey Fine Art, San Francisco, CA
2022
Hyper Modality, Luckman Gallery, California State University Los Angeles, CA - Curated by Mika Cho
2021
Light | Glyphs, William Turner Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
Recent Work, Nancy Toomey Fine Art, San Francisco, CA
2019
Chromatic Flux, Nancy Toomey Fine Art, San Francisco, CA
2018
Recent Works, William Turner Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
2017
Light and Space Divisible, Nancy Toomey Fine Art, San Francisco, CA
2016
Aura and Strata, William Turner Gallery, Los Angeles CA
2015
Chroma, William Turner Gallery, Los Angeles CA
Susan Street Fine Art, Solana Beach, CA
2013
Strata, Toomey-Tourell Gallery, San Francisco CA
Azimuth, William Turner Gallery, Los Angeles CA
2012
Stratum, William Turner Gallery, Los Angeles CA
Flawless Finish Fetish, Susan Street Fine Art, Solana Beach, CA
2011
Birth to Sea Flight, Mint Gallery, Laguna Beach CA
2010
Light, Mint Gallery, Laguna Beach CA
2009
Recent Work, Madsen Gallery, Los Angeles CA
SELECT GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2023
SWELL, Manhatten Beach Art Center
Luxembourg Art Week, The Patinoire Royale | Galerie Valérie Bach, Brussels
Belgium
California Art, Selections from the Frederick R. Weisman Foundation, CSUN
Nancy Toomey Fine Art, San Fransisco, CA
Melissa Morgan Fine Art, Palm Springs, CA
ARTWORXLA, Auction, Hollywood , CA
SCAPE Gallery, Newport Beach, CA
Oliver Cole Gallery, Miami, FL (Art Miami)
William Turner Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
La Patinoire Galerie Valerie Bach, Brussels, Belgium
Susan Street Gallery, San Diego, CA
SAV Gallery, West Hollywood, CA
Surfrider Auction, Hamptons, NY
Oliver Cole Gallery, Miami,FL (Palm Beach Art Fair)
California Art, Selections from the Frederick R. Weisman Foundation, CSULA
2022
Ronald H Silverman Gallery, CSULA, (We are LA) Contemporary Art from the Frederick Weisman Art Foundation
La Patinoire Galerie Valerie Bach, Brussels, Belgium (BRAFA Fair)
Nancy Toomey Fine Art, San Fransisco, CA
Oliver Cole Gallery, Miami, FL (Art Miami)
William Turner Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
La Patinoire Galerie Valerie Bach, Brussels, Belgium
Oliver Cole Gallery, Miami,FL (Palm Beach Art Fair)
SIP gallery, Costa Mesa,CA
Nancy Toomey Fine Art, San Fransisco, CA
William Turner Gallery, Los Angeles, CA - December
William Turner Gallery, Los Angeles, CA - May
Susan Street Gallery, San Diego, CA
2020
William Turner Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
Nancy Toomey Fine Art, San Fransisco, CA
2019
Art Market San Francisco, Nancy Toomey Fine Art
The Californians, Pacific Gallery, Huntington Beach, CA
Art Project, Maui, Hawaii
Lift Space, William Turner Gallery, MDR, CA
Nancy Toomey Fine Art, San Francisco, CA
2018
Laguna Art Museum auction, Laguna Beach, CA
2017
Laguna Art Museum Auction, Laguna Beach, CA
Palm Springs Fine Art Fair, Palm Springs, CA
Area 35 Art Gallery, Milan, Italy
Nancy Toomey Fine Art, San Fransisco, CA
2016
The Grinstein Artist Invitational, Samuel Freeman Gallery, Culver City, CA
Art 1307/Gallery, Milan, Italy
Pulse Art Fair Miami (William Turner Gallery), Miami Beach, FL
Laguna Art Museum Auction, Laguna Beach, CA
Surfrider Foundation, Malibu, CA
Palm Springs Fine Art Fair (William Turner Gallery), Palm Springs, CA
Art 1307, Napoli, Italy
Unit London, London, England
2015
Pallete to Palate, Laguna Art Museum, Laguna Beach, CA
Miami Projects Fair, Art Basel Miami (Toomey-Tourell Gallery), Miami Beach, FL
Riverside City College, Riverside CA
This Is Not Surf Art, Surfing Heritage and Cultural Center, San Clemente, CA
Palm Springs Fine Art Fair (William Turner Gallery), Palm Springs, CA
Mana, Art 1307, Napoli, Italy
Ethereal, William Turner Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
Art Silicon Valley, (Toomey Tourell Gallery), Silicon Valley, CA
2014
The Grinstein Artist Invitational (Rosamund Felsen Gallery) Santa Monica, CA
San Francisco Art Fair (Toomey Tourell Gallery), San Francisco, CA
Family Affairs, International Fine Arts Consortium, New York, NY
Brett Rubbico Gallery, Newport Beach CA
MOAH Museum of Art and History, Lancaster, CA
SHM Surfing Heritage Museum, Huntington, CA
2013
Mana, Meld Gallery, Ka, HI
Art1307, Napoli, Italy
Skin/Deep - Materiality, Sensuality and Paint, William Turner Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
Aqua Art Miami, Toomey-Tourell Gallery, Miami Beach, FL
Surfing Heritage Museum Benefit, Orange County CA
VFC Foundation, Venice, CA
Dallas Art Fair, Toomey-Tourell Gallery, Dallas, TX
2012
Artist and Architects, Joe’s, Venice CA
IMPACT Emotions of Color, Art Space, Virginia Miller Gallery, Miami, FL
Light and Space, Melissa Morgan Fine Art, Palm Desert, CA
Surfrider Foundation, Marina Del Rey CA
SIMA, Laguna Beach, CA
Aqua Art Miami, Toomey-Tourell Gallery, Miami, FL
San Diego Art Fair, Susan Street Fine Art, San Diego, CA
2011
Gleam in the Young Bastard’s Eye, William Turner Gallery, Los Angeles CA
New Work, Murphy and Dine Gallery, New York City, NY
Melissa Morgan Gallery, Palm Springs CA
SIMA, Laguna Beach, CA
Surfrider Foundation Benefit, Malibu, CA
Aqua Art Miami, Toomey-Tourell, Miami, FL
2010
SWELL, Metro Pictures Gallery, New York City, NY
Aquarium of the Pacific, Long Beach CA
Coming Out, SMAS South Gallery, Santa Monica, CA
Heal The Bay Auction
2009
Darkwave Exhibition, The IGM Gallery, University of Southern California, Los Angeles CA
SMAS, South Gallery, Santa Monica, CA
Please contact for public and private collections.
Bibliography
Please contact for entire list.
https://www.laweekly.com/meet-light-fields-painter-casper-brindle/
https://argonautnews.com/light-and-space/
https://artnowla.com/2021/08/30/casper-brindles-new-take-on-light-and-space/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casper_Brindle
http://minnesotastreetproject.com/exhibitions/1275-minnesota-st/casper-brindle-recent-work
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q84uBIyDL90
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https://www.squarecylinder.com/2017/06/casper-brindle-nancy-toomey/
https://issuu.com/turnergallery/docs/casper_brindle?e=0%2F72220300
Biller, Steven, “Step Into the Light (and Space),” Montage Magazine, Winter 2013
Brumer, Andrew,“Casper Brindle,” Andrew Brumer, Visual Art Source, March 2018
http://www.visualartsource.com/index.php?page=editorial&aID=4514
Dambrot, Shana Nys,“The Artists of the Film, Mana,” Whitehot Magazine, August, 2014
de la Haba, Gregory, “Casper Brindle & the Expressive Power of Color,” Whitehot Magazine, April 2015
https://whitehotmagazine.com/articles/brindle-expressive-power-of-color/3165
Frank, Peter, “Casper Brindle: Aura & Strata,” Whitehot Magazine, November 2016
https://whitehotmagazine.com/articles/casper-brindle-aura-strata/3544
Frank, Peter,“Gleam in the Young Bastard’s Eye,” Whitehot Magazine, 2012
https://whitehotmagazine.com/articles/artists-film-mana/3030
Kussatz, Simone,“Casper Brindle: Azimuth,” Art LTD, November 2013
http://artltdmag.com/2013/11/casper-brindle-azimuth-at-william-turner-gallery/
Michno, Christopher, “Critic’s Picks - Los Angeles,” Art LTD, February, 2015
https://fabrikmagazine.com/william-turner-gallery-presents-casper-brindle/
Mills, Mary, Liquid Salt Magazine, February, 2011
http://www.liquidsaltmag.com/2011/02/casper-brindle/
Perras, Kriss, “Casper Brindle: Finish Fetish and Light and Space,” Malibu Arts Journal, March 2018
Turner,Elisa, “California Dreamin’ in Miami,” Art Pulse, August, 2012
Weinstein, Alex, “The Trajectory of His Path,” The Surfers Journal, Volume 20.3, June–July, 2011
http://digital.modernluxury.com/publication/?m=3624&i=721482&p=35&ver=html5
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