Death of a Lunar Cult, the latest exhibition at the Downtown Cultural District gallery, features 12 life-sized paintings by Zach Brown, a Pittsburgh artist who focuses on death, mythology, and the occult. His towering, dramatic oil paintings enrapture with intensely dark colors and hyperrealistic details, their subjects posed against black, void-like backgrounds. His work revels in the terrifying beauty of the macabre, the mysterious, and the unknowable.
The Pittsburgh Cultural Trust website describes Death of a Lunar Cult — now on view through Feb. 4, 2024 — as referencing "the different epochs and shifts from lunar to solar worship throughout history," exploring "varied and combined themes and symbols related to the apollonian and Dionysian, the lunar and solar, the cult of Orpheus, the rights of Mithras, the writings of Toth Hermes Trismegistus, and the cult of Serpais."
Brown spoke with Pittsburgh City Paper about the origins of Death, drawing from contemporary and ancient influences, and finding the right models.
How did Death of a Lunar Cult come about, and how does it continue your fascination with fantastic, surreal imagery and occult themes?
The show started with a large boat burial painting. I started seeking out a small gallery space to exhibit the boat burial along with a series of paintings of underworld gods. I locked down the gallery space for next year but the boat burial sold quickly after booking the space. I had already started the underworld gods so I took that as a jumping-off point. The show evolved and started to shift from lunar earth goddess worship to a giant shining phallus pointing right at the sun with the addition of the warriors. The two groups started to play off each other and the meeting point between them was painting the encounters between Perseus and Medusa then Oedipus and the sphinx.
Photo: Courtesy of Zach Brown
"Oedipus and the Sphinx," part of Death of a Lunar Cult at 707 Gallery
Walking through it, though, I couldn't help but feel a narrative structure like perhaps the subjects in the paintings were at odds or relating to each other on different levels — was that a conscious decision? Or am I just being subjective?
I was building this group of warriors in direct opposition to the old gods. They were leaving the suffocating village and smashing the Venus of Willendorf. Exiting the long house and heading out into the wild. It’s a very old theme playing the lunar against the solar, the feminine against the masculine, order and chaos. I was listening to a lot of operas at the time and 1960s girl groups.Did you use models for the series? If so, what kind of looks were you striving for, and how did they help you achieve those?
One of the fun things about figure painting is casting the characters. The right person/people might be a jeweler you know or a local pup play leather group. Sometimes I do an open call other times I pluck them from the local bar.There are so many small details, like characters stepping over the inner frame, making it seem as though they're crossing a border into reality, and the use of collage, especially what appeared to be layers of gold-painted ginkgo leaves. Can you explain some of the choices and how they differ from some of your previous projects and/or practices?
I generally have a good idea of the overall composition when the model shows up to pose but there are a lot of on-the-field calls when we get to posing. A lot of the design decisions are more instinctual. I try not to question them too much. They come to you like a little jolt of lightning and you run with it.The ginkgo leaves just made sense to me so I jumped into my van and made my way to the Allegheny Cemetery and started to gather up bags of the fallen leaves and pressed them in a bunch of old books I had laying around. When you are at your art practice for so long you start to trust your instincts more and the decisions are just second nature like you’re channeling something.
A description for the show says you were inspired by "ancient Greek mystery schools" and Gnostic writings related to early Judeo-Christian sects. In terms of the latter, I view the show as investigating how cults and mainstream religion are inextricably intertwined. This seems ironic given that some newer established religions are still viewed by outsiders as cults. Was it your intent to examine this hypocrisy?
The focus wasn’t explicitly on any hypocrisies but an exploration of these very ancient themes on how we view history. The stories we tell about ourselves sometimes hold more capital-T truths than a simple history. I forget who said it but the quote is something like "Hercules exists, you don’t." We might be too cool and slick in our modern understanding of things. If even a lesser deity appeared to us and called us to action we’d more than likely write it off and continue on our way. Why would they waste their time?I’m very guilty of magical thinking but, luckily, I’m in a career where that isn’t the worst. Most people are the walking dead, mere life, yeast, house plants. I like to think there are still things at work. Maybe some phantom will give you a blow and call you out of the banal and then you can really start to live. Many mysterious things are happening beneath the surface of the water forming the waves and we either can be tossed around like driftwood or become surfers and really make a spectacle out of it. I’ve been watching Point Break too much.
Zach Brown: Death of a Lunar Cult. Continues through Feb. 4, 2024. 707 Gallery. 707 Penn Ave., Downtown. Free. trustarts.org
