Galleria Valentina Bonomo and Galleria Alessandra Bonomo, in collaboration with The James and Alexandra Brown Estate, present I want to know, an exhibition dedicated to James Brown’s My other house series. The exhibition opens on May 27, 2025, from 6 PM to 9 PM, across the two gallery spaces: Via del Portico d’Ottavia 13 and Via del Gesù 62, in Rome.

James H.D. Brown (Los Angeles, 1951 – Mexico City, 2020) was an American artist known for his paintings that navigate the boundary between figuration and abstraction, blending motifs rooted in modernist tradition with imagery and themes inspired by so-called “primitive” cultures.

The exhibition’s title, I want to know, echoes a phrase Brown often repeated in his daily life—an expression of his enduring curiosity and quest for the unknown.

The project focuses on the series My other house, which includes the artist’s final and previously unseen body of work. The series originated in 2009, during Brown’s time at the former Hacienda Aranjuez near Oaxaca, Mexico. There, his children discovered a hidden room they named “my other house.” Brown saw this space as a powerful metaphor for the creative mind: a private, suspended realm in which to explore personal mythologies, symbolic figures, and visionary architectures.

The works in My other house were created using vintage magazines sourced in Paris and combine painting, collage, and oval formats. The resulting inner landscapes are inhabited by roses, crystals, porcelain objects, and fragments of Art Brut design—a universe where order and chaos coexist, guided by an instinctive and poetic balance. Brown’s practice draws on a wide range of cultural and ethnographic references, shaped by a life lived across many geographies and cultural contexts.

Many of the works on view were created in 2019 during a one-month residency at Cy Twombly’s studio in Bassano in Teverina (VT), where Brown worked alongside his wife, Alexandra Brown. Conceived specifically for the exhibition spaces of the Bonomo galleries, the works continue a long-standing relationship between the artist and the Bonomo family, which began in the 1980s through his collaboration with Galleria Marilena Bonomo in Bari. The exhibition layout respects the original arrangement envisioned by the artist during his time in Twombly’s studio, evoking the intimate and immersive atmosphere of that creative period.

My other house has been previously exhibited internationally, including at the Museo Diego Rivera–Anahuacalli (Mexico City, 2013), the USC Fisher Museum of Art (Los Angeles, 2017) as part of Pacific standard time: LA/LA, Galería Hilario Galguera (Mexico City), and Galerie Karsten Greve (Paris).