Brandes work can be best described as a growing series of elaborate visual fictions based on both experience and his family history. Throughout his work, there is the consistent use of a pictorial language associated with children's illustration, American underground comics and 1960s Czechoslovakian animation. The effect of this cartoon' style is to give his work an accessibility and a surface innocence which is then undermined.
In pieces which range from small loosely executed paintings to intricate drawings made directly onto larger surfaces and with inventive use of unlikely materials (such as second-hand floor vinyl), Brandes shows a self-denigrating and darkly humorous approach to the consideration of history.
In the series of postcards From an Atrocity Tourists Guide to Eastern and Central Europe, the names of locations Brandes has visited and are part of his family history are interwoven with the names of places he has only read about.
Biography
Stephen Brandes was born in Wolverhampton in 1966. He studied at Bath Academy of Art and at the National College of Art and Design in Dublin.
Recent exhibitions have included Eurojet Futures 02, RHA Gallery, 2002; Permaculture, Project, Dublin, 2003; Drawn at the Schick Gallery, Saratoga Springs, NY, and a solo exhibition Ways of Escape at Temple Bar Gallery, Dublin, in May 2004. Public collections include the Irish Museum of Modern Art and the Office of Public Works.