Controversy’s surrounded much of the career of British artist (and Turner Prize nominee) Glenn Brown.

The Brit Art staple’s famed for appropriating (copying, in non-art speak) images created by other artists, from contemporary greats like Howard Hodgkin and Frank Auerbach, to established masters including Dalí or Rembrandt… which goes some way to explain the controversy. He does so, though, in an iconically uniform (and sometimes downright grotesque), painterly fashion, and the results are highly polished, perfectionist driven yet angst riddled surfaces. Brown borrows from art history as much as he does from popular culture, working from the images of science fiction illustrators and many others, along with art canon all-stars, investigating the language of painting and how images are read by the viewer. Working from books or projecting reproductions onto a blank surface, he wildly embellishes his source material. Naturalistic color becomes resolutely kitsch, figures are distorted, while heavy impasto, though painstakingly copied from the original, is rendered entirely flat. An ex-Goldsmith’s College student, Brown was shortlisted for the Turner Prize in 2000, and his work is exhibited worldwide.

This exhibition of Brown’s work at LUMU, supported by TATE Liverpool and Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin, brings together the largest selection of paintings by this internationally revered artist.

February 4-April 11

Ludwig Museum of Contemporary Art   1095 Budapest, Komor Marcell utca 1.  Tel.: +36.1.555.3444   Open: Tue-Sun, 10 a.m.-8 p.m.   www.ludwigmuseum.hu