Thomas Brezing's exhibition 'Is it another day?' (Painting, Video, Installation) at the Basement Gallery in Dundalk is very powerful as it is one that genuinely challenges the viewer who is provoked to think about broad issues such as mortality, media, materialism and metaphysics, instead of seeking out the pretty and picturesque.
A major sculptural work entitled 'Can anybody fly this thing?' takes on the 9/11 atrocity in NYC and Washington with the depiction of the innocent (shown as dolls in boxes bolted to the wall) tucked into bed snugly, while not only watching, but being watched by television. This scene of normalcy is corrupted as three airplanes roar into the wall above. A fourth plummets into the floor behind. The Basement Gallery was at one time Dundalk's Town Goal and the installation works particularly well in the space -a goal cell- where tiny planes collide with and disappear into the impenetrable architecture.
The success of the installation 'Can anybody fly this thing?' is in large part due to Brezing's lightness of touch in combining the benign imagery of childhood with the sordid media aspects of terrorism. His humor is apparent in details such as the two Ken dolls who lie cradling each other in a relaxed TV viewing posture, literally 'put to bed' by the television. They are anaesthetized by the images they are consuming and yet to be awakened by the images they are about to be bombarded with. The work teeters on a knife-edge between a sense of comfort and innocence and the dark undertug of approaching horror in which the dolls take on a grotesque and sinister quality. Their complacency in their cocoon-like beds is poised to become a kind of entombment in which the blackened hand-made papier mache boxes in which they lie take on the quality of coffins. The installation is a brave investigation of 9/11, the media and our reaction to appalling slaughter in relation to our own sense of security and complacency.
The exhibition's title 'Is it another day?' was inspired by Brezing's young daughter's words but with Brezing the tone of voice you use to interpret his work is everything. The naming of the show evokes both the wonder of the world to the questioning child but equally, encapsulates a jadedness in current Irish society and it confronts the issue of our inertia and things taken for granted. In one painting he casts a gently disparaging yet amused eye on the intense excitement and anticipation people felt before the opening of a LIDL supermarket near his home. Being German-born but settled in Ireland for well over a decade, Brezing fully engages with a changing Irish culture whilst retaining the added clarity of an outsider's perspective. His particular vision of the world reminds us to engage in our society not as spectators or consumers but as active questioners.
What is particular to the largely self-taught Brezing's painting is his use of materials and the seamless skill with which he includes craft methods and found objects in his artistic process. His unique voice challenges the viewer to question what constitutes a valid approach in the making of 'high art'. His appropriation off odd printing materials such as bubble wrap, folk decals or the use of stencil ribbons to create tree skeletons underscore his rather populist and non-academic approach.
Whilst Brezing engages with dark subject matter it is unexpectedly beautiful. How ever, his work brings attention to the fact that art need not aim low at merely simplistic beauty, but pursue a higher aim, which might awaken an empathetic questioning perspective in the viewer. Brezing's work demands the viewer to ponder on the nature of art and the heady role it can play.
A very fine show that is well worth seeing. A major accomplishment in Irish art, one that comments critically on the growing consumer culture and on what we may be becoming numb to.
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