Alex Brewer

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.

HENSE is most renowned for his abstract mural, “Building Blocks (aka “The Mural of Unusual Size,” May 2017), 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 (137 feet) tall and 50 meters (170 feet) 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 (118 feet) tall and 11 meters (36 feet) wide. At Icon Midtown, Atlanta’s tallest new tower in a decade (as of 2018), the muralist HENSE has completed an untitled piece that measures 86 feet tall and 65 feet wide.

"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."

AlexBrewer HENSE Madison Theatre Building Detroit Michigan 2014

AlexBrewer HENSE Commissioned Public Mural in Lima Peru 2013

AlexBrewer HENSE Commissioned mural for the city of Atlanta 2012

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."

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.

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.