Alex Brewer


Alex Brewer, also known as HENSE, is an American contemporary artist, best known for his dynamic, vivid and colorful abstract paintings and monumental wall pieces. He has been active since the 1990s. In 2002 he began accepting commissions for artwork and over the course of the last decade has established a solid reputation as a commissioned artist, having appeared in several solo and group shows.
Although part of the legitimate art world for a decade, he is not apologetic about his years spent as a graffiti artist, as he feels this informs his current work.

Early life

Brewer was born and raised in Atlanta. He began doing graffiti at the age of 13 under the name HENSE and was so prolific at it that he earned what graffiti artists call “all-city status” by having left tags in practically every neighborhood in the city.
Brewer graduated from Grady High School in Atlanta. He attended Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond for a semester, but dropped out to pursue his calling as a graffiti artist.

Career

Grounding in Graffiti

Brewer developed his skill for graffiti in the mid to late '90s and early 2000s. At this time the city had a handful of “legal walls”, such as the Civic Yard at Peachtree and Pine streets, where graffiti artists could display their work. However, in 2003 Atlanta passed an anti-graffiti ordinance that made it illegal to paint private murals on public property without approval from the city.

Artwork

Brewer has produced a number of interior and exterior works around the world for both public institutions and private companies.
HENSE is most renowned for his abstract mural, “Building Blocks, which spans the length of three old industrial buildings on West Baltimore Street in downtown Hagerstown, Maryland. His largest installation to date is The ISIL Institute in Lima, Peru amassing a size of 40 meters tall and 50 meters wide. The PUBLIC 2015/Northam Silos, a site-specific mural installation on the CBH Group grain silos, curated by FORM and funded by FORM and the CBH Group in Northam, Western Australia measures 36 meters tall and 11 meters wide. At Icon Midtown, Atlanta’s tallest new tower in a decade, the muralist HENSE has completed an untitled piece that measures 86 feet tall and 65 feet wide.
One of Brewer's stated highest honors was a commission by the High Museum of Art in Atlanta to produce a site-specific installation as part of the museum's summer exhibition, Drawing Inside the Perimeter. He also created two original installations at the Museum of Design Atlanta, for the Skate It or Hang It?! Exhibition, which illustrate the impact that skateboarding art has made on his work.
In addition, he has commissioned work at Apple Inc, including a site-specific mural commissioned for new retail store barricade, along with artwork created for limited edition products, commissioned by Apple Inc, in Miami, Florida. He also has work at Facebook Inc, including a site-specific mural commissioned for Facebook Global Headquarters, in a building designed by Frank Gehry, commissioned by Facebook Inc, in Menlo Park, California. In addition to several works at companies including Aol, B2 Studios, Big Nerd Ranch, Hilton Hotels, King & Spalding, DLA Piper, Novartis, Tuner Broadcasting's Adult Swim, Cartoon Network, and PRPL Digital Creative Agency.

Legal issues

On April 1, 2011, Brewer and several other local Atlanta graffiti artists were sued for $1 million by a pair of Edgewood Avenue property owners. Brewer and several legitimate artists have countersued saying they had nothing to do with the work that they are being sued for. Another article describes the shift as ironic: "the same people the city had once paid officers to lock up were now receiving commissions from city coffers."

Style

Brewer’s free-form paintings and public mural installations use a combination of abstract lines, shapes and organic forms. His work has been described as fluid and playful and as an explosion of pastels.
Michael Rooks, the curator of modern and contemporary art at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, said: "HENSE combines the quick pace and point-of-view of street culture with tumultuous compositions often characterized by highly keyed color, vertiginous line and biomorphic shapes."
"The artist thinks of his recent works on panel as a form of collage, in which, as he describes, he adds and subtracts different forms until the work feels finished. The results could be described as an elegantly choreographed cacophony, in which loosely geometric forms jostle one another and, in some of his paintings, rub up against kaleidoscopic patches of pigment. At their generous size, these works engulf viewers, sweeping us up in their visual rhythms—in which you just might detect the pulse of the street."

Solo exhibitions