Anders Brinch

ANDERS BRINCH

A freakish reality

Anders Brinch belongs to a generation of young painters with no qualms about utilising both popular culture and classical art history as points of departure. His works are poetic and grotesque, playful and serious, often with great themes involved.

Cancer, 2006

Description
Written in giant letters across the ca. 4 metres wide canvas is the word “cancer”. The serpentine shapes of the letters have been applied with glitter and sequins. Large pieces of dotted and striped fabric in bright colours are glued onto a base of paint. Likewise, the frame is covered in padded fabric.

Corrosion of Perception could be described as a hybrid between a monster and a gargantuan cactus. The 2.5 metres tall creature is painted green and strewn with glimmering glass shards. Its body is covered in large red apertures with pointed teeth stuck on. Inside some of the apertures is a staring eye, on the top sit six spiralling horns.

About the work
The painting Cancer has a candy floss-like expression which in this oversize format becomes almost grotesque. The glitter and festive sequins of the letters are a stark contrast to their message of illness and death. A fatal message usually treated with deadly seriousness is here presented in an almost playful fashion.

Corrosion of Perception too contains a mix of seriousness and play. The work looks both friendly and menacing, helpless and yet ready to devour you. The figure looks like a strange creature drawn from a far-out world. Read more about the works... 

About the artist
Anders Brinch does not limit himself to one medium. In addition to painting he works with sculpture, drawing and installation. Not as delimited media but in a manner that brings about new combinations, expressions and forms. The artistic freedom to manoeuvre and pave the way for new expressions is essential.

Brinch explores the banal and trivial mixed with great themes such as life and death. Often employing his own life as a catalyst, he considers it a challenge to work on subjects that are heavy or bordering on cliché.

PICKING AND CHOOSING
Anders Brinch’s idiom is inspired by various traditions in painting, such as pop art, expressionism and surrealism. But like many other young artists, he is also very much a product of the broad visual culture he lives in. Thus manifest references to comics, toys, acid rock and the internet are also found in his works. The artist “allows” himself to pick and choose, juxtaposing elements in new ways. The result is very personal, freakish imagery and a popping palette.

Literature
”Som at smøre en madpakke - MALERHJERNE! Ungt dansk maleri” (Marie Laurberg), KlubARKEN magazine, no. 17. July-December 2006
Oxygen Islands (ed. Inge Dybbro), Kastrupgaardsamlingen, 2007