>>PREVIEW
BRENNAN KELLY’S SUPER HAPPY FUN TIME
Runs until March 31
Looks Could Kill Art Boutique (Art Central)
"There is a freshness to Brennan Kelly’s work that appeals to many who enjoy art," says Jennifer McGaw of Looks Could Kill Boutique. "His art is a modern view of low-brow without the street imagery, and he is part of a movement that does not even have a name yet."
Perhaps that is why there are serious collectors that have begun to take notice of new artists such as Kelly – they don’t know something is growing out of Calgary’s young art scene.
With his first solo show, Super Happy Fun Time, Kelly is bringing a new edge to an old concept. His works are surreal monsters and spirits surrounded by grotesque imagery and violence, yet infused with a sense of humour and satire.
"My art is kind of nonsensical," says Kelly. "People giggle and chuckle, but it is not too deep. I try to tell people not to over-analyze my stuff – it isn’t connected to a larger narrative."
The pieces that make up Super Happy Fun Time are a variety of energetically weird, disturbing images. Many of his creations are done on found objects, such as skateboards or old colouring book pages. The latter are the more surreal, finding humour in added layers of ironic context. Taking old childhood colouring book pages, Kelly has re-edited them and made the simple childhood imagery into hallucinatory, drug-fuelled nightmares. They are untitled, but read bizarrely, such as one that says, "When Pocahontas returned to her forest, she never forgot to floss," that features a monstrous Frankenstein monster version of Bambi. You will never view the Disney film in the same way again.
"Since I was a kid, I used to white-out the speech bubbles in old comics and rewrite them with new words," says Kelly. "I love editing the content and the context of the messages." Kelly admits to being influenced by the graphic novel medium, particularly Daniel Clowes’s 8-Ball and Charles Burns’s surreal masterpiece, Black Hole.
Kelly’s art is new and still young – his show is more about the energy of art and not about subtlety. But there is a lot of promise. "His work is very youthful," says McCaw. "I was afraid at first that the show would be too edgy, that people would look at it and not get it. But everyone who has seen his work has been very enthusiastic and his prints sold out very quickly.
"He has an esthetic that appeals to everyone who enjoys the surreal and the bizarre," she adds. "Everyone from house moms in their 40s, to kids that are often younger."
This may be Kelly’s first show, but it will not be the last. A collector of art from the Royal Art Lodge in Winnipeg and the curator of Calgary’s tattoo convention have picked up some of Kelly’s works precisely because it is edgy, angry and new. Super Happy Fun Time is bizarre, grotesque, chaotic and a great debut. |
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