Welcome Stranger consists of two large canvases, Fragment (1995) and Solution (1995), both works being realised in oil on linen.
The paintings depict two imaginary office scenes containing workstations with temporary partitions, familiar office equipment and anonymous workers busying themselves as if in a regular office environment, but set against the backdrop of an abstract landscape. The dream-like tranquility of the two imaginary scenes is interrupted by the figure of a woman, repeated between the two works, who looks out of the painting at the viewer, returning their gaze. This is essentially a simple gesture: situating paintings of office scenes in an office building. However, the vast size of these works (140 x 450cm) and their mysterious setting highlighting G-BRECHT’s use of the building as a window to look into a concealed world.
As a painter G-Brecht explores issues of power, happiness, entertainment, burn-out and agony. G-BRECHT is also a professional set-designer for theatre productions and the sheer scale of these paintings is reminiscent of stage backdrops and scenery, but more importantly it is evident that issues imagined or constructed realities, in which imminent action is intimated, are worked through in all his work.
G-BRECHT graduated in Fine Art at Goldsmiths College, London following periods of study at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten, Amsterdam in 1997, the Rietveld Academy, 1994 and the Royal Academie of Fine Arts in The Hague, 1990. He has exhibited widely since 1994 and is in many corporate collections.
G-BRECHT has been supported by the Royal Netherlands Embassy in London.