Exhibit about more than death

Artist's work features Las Vegas sites where famous people died

Louie Traub/VIEWLocal artist Mark Brandvik relaxes in the Dust Gallery in downtown Las Vegas, where his art, which monochromatically illustrates places where famous people have died, is on display. Advertisement

Las Vegas painter Mark Brandvik doesn't want anyone to be too distracted by the fact that most of the paintings in Primer, his new show at Dust Gallery, 1221 S. Main St., are of places where someone died.

The paintings, done with automotive primer on wood panels, render a series of Las Vegas scenes in fields of gray and white.

Most of them are named for the people who died there. "Dave Strickland" and "Stu Ungar" are close-cropped views of the Oasis Motel, where the actor and the poker champ took their own lives. "Tupac Shakur," though it's impossible to tell, shows the corner of Flamingo Boulevard and Koval Lane where the rapper was shot.

Brandvik said he is interested in the places where well-known people died in his hometown.

"There's a difference between where Tupac was shot and where Joe the mailman was shot. We don't view them the same way," he said, but added, "I'm hoping this isn't just some sort of documentary."

The painter's motivation for making the series was not as straightforward as that. And not all of the paintings are connected to a death. "Dayvid Figler" and "Allen Berry" are paintings of the living namesakes' homes. Some of paintings of living persons' homes were included simply because Brandvik found something interesting in the building's architecture.

Berry, a good friend of Brandvik's, said he recognized the entryway to his own house near Charleston Boulevard immediately when he saw "Allen Berry" and loves the painting.

Gates and doorways are a more common theme in the Primer series than death.

In most of the works, Brandvik said, "the painting becomes sort of a portal between public and private."

He said the sites where gambling heir Ted Binion or jazz singer Joe Williams gave up the ghost were chosen more as a way to focus the series than anything else.

He called the locations a "point of departure for making paintings."

The paintings are like his earlier series of portraits of A-frame houses and structures in Las Vegas, chosen because he finds A-frame houses -- designed to cope with rain -- an interesting anomaly in the desert. But, where earlier paintings were pure aesthetic investigations, the ones in Primer have a more immaterial theme binding them.

The paintings in Primer are, for Brandvik, still a subset of a larger series examining places of interest in the city.

The artist said he found that he was a little looser in executing these paintings than his similar early works. He did them without attempting to clean up the initial marks made while drawing the basic forms. And the paintings are mostly basic forms with little detail -- almost schematic.

He said he wanted to preserve the moments they represent.

A digital camera served as his sketchbook for this series, but the final pieces are stylized and by no means photographically faithful. They are meant as designs that allude to a place.

His main interest is architecture, which he describes as his first love in both its utilitarian and aesthetic aspects. An adjunct drawing and design professor at UNLV, Brandvik studied architecture as an undergraduate at UNLV before completing a master of fine arts degree in painting at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Brandvik's work has appeared at Dust several times before, but this was his first solo show.

"We're really excited about the direction the work went," said Dust gallery co-owner Jerry Misko.

Brandvik mentioned that he is working on a few others in this series, including the doorway to the hotel room at the Hard Rock Hotel and casino where John Entwistle, bassist for The Who, died.

"I don't have a flippant response to people passing," he said, adding the he feels that he did the paintings with a sense of respect -- those named for the living included.

Brandvik's mother died while he was working on the series, and he said he completed it in a state of numbness.

"I haven't had a lot of time to reflect on what's up here," he said.

Primer will be on display at Dust through Aug. 5. Gallery hours are from noon to 5 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday.

For information, call 880-3878 or go to www.dustgallery.com.