Set the World on Fire

A solo exhibition, Set the World on Fire, featuring new works by Kevin Brand is scheduled to open at Bell-Roberts on May 7, 2008. A noted Cape Town artist and educator, Kevin Brand is also the recent recipient of the Mercedes-Benz South Africa 2008 Art Award for an Art Project in Public Spaces.

Video: Interview with Kevin Brand on the exhibition

Brand's new Bell-Roberts exhibition consists of unique wall-pieces that explore the boundary between low-relief and painting. Working in such media as painted wood, Perspex, and pressed aluminium, Kevin Brand takes his inspiration from simple every day objects and reinterprets them. In his hand, egg-cartons, cardboard boxes, and lego-like churches, sky-scrapers and factories are re-invented into formal compositions that range in size from 1760 x 1800 mm to 170 x 130 mm. According to writer Paul Edmonds, Kevin Brand turns mundane objects into "sophisticated, evocative, and resonant works of art". Although suggestive of the sculptural, these multi-faceted works are informed by drawing, and indeed each composition is in fact a drawing that has found its way into materials more often associated with three-dimensional objects. Writing in the exhibition's catalogue, Edmonds notes: "From the bare minimum of carefully chosen lines Brand manages to coax archetypal images whose simplicity belies their accuracy." To achieve this result the artist has articulated a highly aesthetic palette rendered with industrial pigments.

Early in February, Brand was named recipient of the Mercedes-Benz South Africa 2008 Art Award (formerly the DaimlerChrysler Award) for an Art Project in Public Spaces. Intended to promote the artistic and cultural life of South Africa, this award supports "talented and innovative South African artists and helps raise their profile at national and international levels". It includes a cash prize as well as an exhibition in Berlin, Pretoria and Stellenbosch with seven other finalists. A catalogue will be published featuring the work of all eight finalists, with a larger section dedicated to Brand. Speaking on behalf of the award selection panel, jury-member Bongi Matlau, praised Brand's ability as artist to reference historical events, and to "capture public imagination" through "materiality, scale and process". Matlau went on to note that Kevin Brand works outside convention, and that his "… production is brave and is not restricted to rules and boundaries that often come with commissions". The jury's summation concluded that Brand, "… has been a significant commentator on South African Society for almost thirty years."

The first solo exhibition of Kevin Brand's work to follow the awarding of this prize, Bell-Roberts' Set the World on Fire will run from May 7 to May 31. A catalogue illustrating the works in the show, along with an essay by Paul Edmonds has been published in conjunction with the exhibition.

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