Erik Brandt is an artist who got his visual communications Masters in 2000 in graphic design, from VCU, and returned on Monday as a visiting artist, an experience which he concluded was something he had been looking forward to for a long time. Since graduating from VCU, he has been teaching as well as creating his own work. His focus of interest is in globalization, and his main medium of choice is typography. He stated that part of his main focus is to contextualize everyday issues around the world in a way where we step back and actually ‘slowly read’ through the information given to us. I feel that as a visiting artist, he has to be one of the best at interacting his audience. Something that one of his old VCU professors taught him to do as a commencement action as well as a way to release nervousness is called “Banzai”. Upon entrance to the theatre, we were given newspaper hats that, at first glance were unidentifiable, but we were requested to wear it into the theatre, and while we were sitting. Then, after a small introduction, Erik counted down in Japanese, one, two, three, and then we all yelled BANZAI!, and the hats were actually Japanese Samurai hats.
The rest of the artist lecture did not impress me as much as his little drill he performed at the beginning, partially because I kept going back to his interaction with us. His work was very interesting and did sometimes touch on some sensitive issues such as a video he did that was post-9/11 that brought light to issues people already knew, but were still sensitive subjects. He also talked a lot about how people “ have started to get society to start taking care of brands, like a need to brand something again and again”. He spent some time in Doha, Qatar, while he was on the exchange program, and he photographed trucks that had been hand painted with a specific brand, as if that gave the vehicle some wealth. They were giving their beat up trucks value by assigning brands, which is a scary thought, especially because people do put so much emphasis on a brand, whether it is clothing or a car. The picture above is an example.
Erik Brandt brought up ideas about society and global issues that affect everyone, yet he also focuses on such specific issues in differing cultures that bring light to the rest of the world through one example. I find his work sometimes confusing and erratic, yet there are always more hidden meanings that I find and discover the more I spend on looking at his pieces.
The rest of his work can be checked out at the following link:
