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Indepth Arts News:
"Kevin Brand: An Exhibition of Paintings Entitled 4x4"
2003-02-05 until 2003-03-01
Bell-Roberts Art Gallery
Cape Town, ,
ZA South Africa
Kevin Brand’s new show ‘4 X 4’ comprises work that he exhibited last year at Aardklop, the Potchefstroom arts festival. The body of work continues Brand’s exploration of the ‘banal’ which began with the bronzes, entitled ‘Balm of Banal’ that he showed at the Bell-Roberts last year. Although Brand is best known as a sculptor whose work tackles political and ideological issues head-on, his recent work has seen him retreat from this position and examine issues which are more personal and everyday.
He has always felt free to move from one medium or process to another and, as such, painting is not that radical a departure. Where his ‘Balm of Banal’ series saw him create a series of assemblages made from ‘everyday’ items such as eggboxes and bars of soap, here Brand takes such ‘neutral’ subject matter and renders it in a series of monochromatic paintings. In what has become a typical device for him, the paintings are pixellated, which is a way he says ‘… of removing the hand’. That the images are taken from such apparently ‘neutral’ sources – mechanical manuals, postcards or the housing section of the newspaper – seems to further enhance this sort of removal from the source of his production. Brand though, through his acute visual sensibility, engagement in the process of art-making and his strategic approach to this practice, manages to make a series of works which are intriguing, evocative and a little unsettling.
Kevin Brand has exhibited widely both in South Africa and abroad and his work is held in many private, public and corporate collections. He is a former winner of the FNB Vita Art award and lives and works in Cape Town.
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