Childs Play

  
In "Remember When We Were Older" Thomas Brezing pursues a high-risk strategy by basing the title for his show on something his younger daughter said to him. "In many ways", he says, "she had a big input in this body of work. When she asks in the morning "Is it another day?" I feel like running into the studio and painting something around these words." Enthusiasm for notions built around the innocent wisdom of children can quickly pall for all save their adoring parents. And, anyway, it's not fair to thrust youngsters into the front line. In the event Brezing's is a very good exhibition. It's good because, while drawing liberally on pearls of childish wisdom, there is in the end nothing overly cute or sentimental about it. He relishes the point of view bestowed by an innocent eye but doesn't pretend to innocence himself. There is a consistently dark undercurrent he conjures up, a world with dreamy, storybook and theatrical qualities. It's a shadowy world, described in silhouette built up in layers of pattern and texture, wintry in feeling. Whether consciously or not, in the paintings innocuous goings on, related to entertainment or shopping, have a slightly ominous edge. This may have something to do with the idea that innocence must be protected, that it flourishes in the midst of an enveloping darkness. Brezing favours a muted, tonal palette of mauve and purple greys, assembling compositions with a nice offhand touch that recalls Paddy Graham and occasionally, Anselm Kiefer in terms of pictorial architecture and strategy.
Aidan Dunne, Irish Times, 2005


Thomas Brezing, Remember When We Were Older?
Ashford Gallery, RHA, Dublin, January 7-27 2005

 
Readers of press descriptions of Thomas Brezing's recent exhibition at the RHA may be forgiven for their lack of attendance of a show which reeked of excessive parental adoration at the expense of critical interest. Brezing himself was to blame for this blunder, having produced a rather misleading press release which highlighted the inspiration of his four-year-old daughter's utterings over his own long-term development of a socially-critical content and highly personal painting style. The exhibition consisted of a series of nine works on paper, six small canvases and three wall-sized canvases. The strength of the show lay in the works on paper, which, rightly, dominated the RHA's catalogue. The RHA's representation of Thomas Brezing in two group exhibitions, a two-person show and this solo exhibition since 2002 reflects his steady development as an artist. "Remember When We Were Older" marks a particularly significant step forward both stylistically and in its clarification of critical content. It confirms what was already slowly becoming apparent, that Brezing is becoming one of Ireland's most interesting emerging painters. The works on paper are highly resolved, refreshingly simple yet weighty statements which are a sure sign not only of talent, but of artistic maturity on Brezing's part. Painted in well-diluted oils, they contain a faded Rococo palette of powder blue, icy white, sandy pinks and chocolate browns. The use of stencils to build up wall-paper-like passages of paint gives the impression of intricate collage fragments. Brezing's works on paper are unexpectedly beautiful, which lends a poignant air to their rather existentialist content. What he presents is not so much a linear narrative as an evocation of a world, suspended somewhere between a brutal post-capitalist reality and a mindscape of a skeletal post-pollution environment in a non-country, be it Ireland, Germany or any postindustrial 'place'. Bystanders cluster around non-events, waiting for the opening of Lidl, or watching an acrobat or an Elvis look-alike go through the motions again and again. There are two kinds of people in Brezing's world; bystanders and performers, those who act and those who watch, yet both appear to be useless. Architecture is non-descript and transparent. Agency is removed, replaced by the subjectivity of globalised consumer, much bemoaned by Zygmunt Bauman et al. If there is any intelligence in Brezing's world it would seem to belong to animals- a lone cow, a few wolves who provide some kind of natural balance to the complete unreality of the surrounding performances and non-activity. Markings of '292 Kg' on the buttocks of the aforementioned bovines detracts from any relapse into romanticism. There is a harking back to German memories in the presence of watchtowers and sickly skeletal trees, which seem to remember the destruction of German forests and peoples. Yet there is little nostalgia as such. Even in works such as 'What if she dies like Snow White?' the sweetness of Brezing's daughter's question is juxtaposed against a world which does not care. The works are not didactically pointing to a solution but live in an uninhabitable present. As Brezing explains in the most articulate line of the press release 'It tells of people who have no-where to go, but they go there again'. In many of the works, Brezing has retained his personal symbols (some rather obscure) such as bunting, which alternates between celebratory flags and threatening spikes, a shower-head 'tap' which can appear to water, listen, leak poison or create a phallic presence, and (circus) tents. Yet they seem to have come to fruition in these newer pieces, given their new context in paint-based as opposed to mixed-media works. In Brezing's previous work, much was lost to a somewhat cluttered presentation of numerous interesting fragments within each work. Text has become more central to the newer work, present in both English and German (the artist's mother tongue), with a mixture of personal statements, quotations from his daughter and German nursery rhymes and cliches. Ireland isn't spared a specific critique, cushioned as it is in the form of a compliment (a giveaway of Brezing's integration of the Irish way of talking about things, following twelve years in this country). One small canvas depicting a wolf and a pastiche flower motif reads 'Ireland is grey, grey is beautiful, Ireland is beautiful.' The work is not without humour. Three small canvases, depicting a road to nowhere, occupied by the odd pig and shower-head, read 'The pigs are in the painting for their own protection.' -a rather polite retake on Morrissey's Meat is Murder. Given the complexity of the work at hand, it needs to be seen in person to achieve any kind of overview. Brezing's ongoing dedication to oversized canvases sees him developing something verging on a personal history painting, albeit filled with decorative and symbolic additions, at times reminiscent of German post-war work. It will take time to bring them to the same level of resolution as the smaller works on paper. However, Brezing's dedication to painting over the past ten years promises that much will be achieved in the years to come.  
Lucy Cotter, CIRCA Online, 2005

Thomas Brezing, 'Is it another day?'
Basement Gallery, Dundalk, August 4th - 26th 2005

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.
David Newton, artist, 2005

Thomas Brezing, 'Something that could have lived'
South Tipperary Arts Centre, 18th September - 12th October 2002
The main function of an artist is to ask the big questions. Everyone faces these questions: life, death, meaning, self-worth etc. The artist responds - sometimes using seemingly light or simplistic means; sunny landscapes, frothy tunes, rhyming poems - but even these exist only to complement, in the same way that day, for example, complements night.
Brezing chooses, or is compelled to choose, the darker route in his quest for the truth. Paintings and sculptures seem unremittingly bleak, offering us stark structures, and devices of constraint. In addition, the sculptures incorporate the innocent toys of childhood, but set into dark circumstances. It would be hard to look at Brezing's work however, and not see the same purging, self-purging, that inhabits the work of a certain seam of post 2nd world war painting and sculpture. Anselm Kiefer, has, in some ways, used the same contrasting tenderness and angularity, the same starkness, with, somewhere, just a tiny sapling of delicate hope. The realisation that the delicate, can be crushed into oblivion, underlies Brezing's imagery also, - and we are not even given the comfort of lush colors. A comparison should also be made with a contemporary Irish painter, Paddy Graham, who seeks to lay bare the soul of the painter, the picture, the self and the viewer.
If we view Thomas Brezing's work for more than the cursory glance, we may be struck by certain common practices. For example, he includes arcane verbal texts, in English and in German. These are both unsettling and reassuring. Reassuring because they hint at ways leading into the work, but unsettling, because words such as ''sensitive'' or something that could have lived, lived, lived', do not engender comfort in the viewer.
Images are equally unnerving. An ambiguous Coliseum/Twin-Towers-wreck shape dominates the large triptych. Under this, a promenade, ambiguously festooned with coloured lights, and are those, searchlights (?) contains the silhouettes of people, who seem to change in the course of their journey across the walled bridge, walking among sheep. Others carry rifles on their backs; or point them, as if to shoot, - the threatened and the threat.
In other places we can see hearts, built with swirls of glutinous, thick paint, or, stencilled leaves & tiny flowers. But it is not necessarily to these small images that we should look for hope. These paintings are like all art, mirrors to show ourselves. Look deeply for the signs buried deep within. The reward may not be some easy, or Pauline conversation and we should not expect this. But we may enrich our lives. Give these mirrors the time and the respect that is their due. Despite looking as if they have been made hastily, careful observation will reveal that they have been hard-won, over long time. Take time to feel their worth.
John Philip Murray, artist, 2002

Introduction to 'What's he building in there?' catalogue
Thomas Brezing's art is uncompromisingly honest and raw, cheeky and dark in the one breath. His is a distinctive and original voice, tautly eloquent, moulding a tough yet fragile path. There is nothing easy about this body of work, walking a sharp line, a knife-edge between life and death. It is a vision with intense difficult undertows, unafraid to probe close to the bone and open it up. Death is a continual presence, accenting in sharp relief all those joys that make life vibrant.
Brezing grew up in Germany during the high tensions of the Cold War. Central Europe was caught right in the middle between the two Superpowers' dangerous mind games, and with an older brother in the army coming home to recount vivid details of what might come to pass, his formative years were not short on fear and anxiety. This is part of his personal inheritance; caught between fear of the future and the dreadful legacy of shame all Germans bore - and many still do - for what had been done in their name. I write all this as an introduction because Brezing's work is highly autobiographical. His life as he lives it is his art. Very frequently the tiny details of his life find their way onto and into his constructed surfaces and just as frequently they are played against a historical background constantly echoing the insignia of violence and war.
Brezing is a man with big attitude and shoots straight from the hip. He is largely self taught having by-passed an academic art school training. It isn't something he regrets, 'it's just the way things went'. It is to his credit that he has turned this into a strenght by finding his own very sure and distinctive voice so quickly. There is an inevitable element of naivete in his work as a result of going this route but it is refreshing to come across when so many around are savvy and shiny and made bland by too much knowingness and art-speak. He isn't one of the 'in' crowd and somehow one suspects that he prefers it this way. The 'outsider' quality to his art befits his personality. He willingly eschews the conventions of High Art such as oil on canvas for craft materials, found objects and text, media that relate much more closely to people's everyday lives. As does contemporary music which he feels a more direct connection to than he does to other artists. The evocative and haunting, slow core sounds of bands such as Sophia, Redhouse Painters, Portishead feed into his work and the way he uses text frequently works as would words in song, like a refrain. Brezing's art can be intricate and busy but it is always accessible. He wears his heart on his sleeve, brandishes his thoughts like a slogan on a T-shirt and walks at street level.
There are artistic influences at work of course, as there need to be in any seriously committed artist and Thomas Brezing certainly is that. He has evolved into an artist while living here in Ireland over the last nine years and has benefited from looking closely and selectively at a few major players here on the Irish art scene. He could also, in time, gain by reaching closer to his old home and tasting contemporary art practice there. Germany is culturally very rich and Thomas inherits a strong tradition of art, philosophy and music. His thinking processes are already fully formed by his place of birth, his complex twists of thought redolent of Nietzsche, Rielke, Thomas Mann and Hermann Hesse, where light and dark wrestle together as intense bedfellows in search of an ultimate purity, an ideal.
There is a strong socio-political slant to Brezing's thinking and art. It is a genuine and heartfelt impulse, seen most clearly in 'Prisoner in your able body world'. In fact, Thomas' whole body of work stems from noticing and recognising a prisoner's wound, drawing public attention to it and then joining him in the pit to share a few racy jokes and risque confidences over a flask of Red Bull and vodka.
Maura Murtagh, artist, 2001