It has been a busy past few months for Oakland painter and cell phone photography aficionado Brett Amory. When I last visited his studio in March, he was getting ready to show his latest body of work, “Waiting 101,” at The Outsiders Gallery in Newcastle. This rising international art star shows no signs of slowing down, though. Before saying goodbye and taking off for England, Brett had already moved into a new studio across town and invited me to his space to see his latest body of work for a group show at the Orange County Center for Contemporary Art.
Titled “Random Acts of Time,” the upcoming show explores the interplay of destiny and coincidence through videos, installations and paintings from a diverse group of artists. Amory created mural-sized paintings based on his iPhone photos of passersby. But instead of focusing on the energy of the moment like in his last series, he stripped away any traces of visual context and painted larger-than-life figures forever encapsulated in moments of waiting. The characters have no backgrounds in the literal and figurative sense — they sit idly, caught in moments brimming with potential to take a life-changing turn. Catch these works in “Random Acts of Time,” which opens May 5 in Santa Ana.
