TAKING THE WRAPS OFF

Actor Adrien Brody’s latest solo exhibition ‘Made In America’ opens in Manhattan

- RACHEL SHERMAN

‘I’m a little in a daze,’ actor Adrien Brody said last week, the skin around his eyes slightly crinkled, but his gaze soft and present.

He’d been up since 5am and had spent most of his day crouched on the ground at Eden Gallery in Manhattan, putting the finishing touches on his collages ahead of the next evening's opening of his latest solo exhibition “Made In America”.

The floors and walls were covered with canvases, themselves covered with old newspaper advertisements, erratic splashes of graffiti and darkly rendered cartoon characters. Donald Duck, Mickey Mouse and Marilyn Monroe were in attendance. As were the Hamburglar and a toy soldier. In a nearby corner was an empty gum wall, soon to be covered in wads of chewing gum straight from the mouths of attendees in an interactive “expression of rebellion and decay”, according to the wall text.

Adrien Brody, the Oscar-winning actor, is also Adrien Brody, the impassioned painter, is also Adrien Brody, the beats-mixing sound artist. Those mediums converge in a collection of more than 30 works. Accompanied by Brody's sound-scapes, the show features large mixed media art in what he calls an autobiographical display of the gritty New York of his youth, and the culture of violence and intolerance today. It’s an approach that has been met with some derision both in the art press and on social media.

“Made In America”, on view until June 28, also includes photographs of and by his mother, acclaimed Hungarian American photographer Sylvia Plachy — a role model for Brody, who was never formally trained in visual art.

It’s been nearly a decade since Brody, 52, last showed his work publicly, at Art Basel Miami. So why now?

“I’m an unemployed actor at the moment,” he said with a half smile.

Though it’s difficult to picture Brody as unemployed, especially when which his artworks sell for six figures, this isn’t untrue. The last film Brody shot was in 2023,