Bouquet Bastion, 2023
Acrylic and oil on canvas
24 x 24 in

Brach Tiller (lives and works in Detroit, MI) received an MFA from Cranbrook School of Art in 2021 and a BFA from Bowling Green State University in 2016.

Tiller creates hypnagogic paintings whose meticulous execution and farcical ambiguity blur the lines between fact and fiction. Using digital physics to create a simulation of reality which is unclear, yet recognizable, Tiller renders scenes with great mass whose clean and flat surface echoes the two-dimensional screens which increasingly mediate our interpersonal communication. The humor embedded in the tension between reality and unreality lends an absurdist balance between optimism and nihilism, questioning the new forms of expression in cross-embedded media which might reveal humanity’s innate fluidity.