This sounds like the cliché headline to a sappy special about internal struggle, the meaning of life, and finding your own path in the world, but in the case of experimental artist Brendan Forde, it’s a true story.
When Brendan first relocated to Chengdu from Vancouver in 2010 he was in the business of construction, and one look at the Chengdu skyline over the last ten years is enough to see that business was booming. Therefore, it wasn’t an easy decision to quit a comfortable, stable lifestyle in exchange for printing T-shirts, spray painting psychedelic skulls, and bombing plaster heads on buildings in the dead of the night. Yet, Brendan admits it was the “best f**cking decision I’ve ever made.”
Internal Struggle
Brendan’s whole career is defined by the moments he has defiantly walked away, starting with art school in his early twenties.
After his teacher took his hand and corrected his brushstroke,
“I literally put my brush down, walked out, and quit.” Brendan says as he shakes his head. “It didn’t make sense to me.”
He later walked away from his own successful construction business in the U.K., quit his lucrative post in Vancouver, walked away from a brief career on television for lack of creative control, and eventually refused to re sign his business contract in Chengdu. But learning when to quit is not a sign of weakness, and few would call Brendan a quitter… or weak.
At 6 feet and 225lbs, his sheer physical physique is a testament to his partial insanity and an homage to his past.
Growing up as a child in Eastbourne, U.K., Brendan was a typical sensitive and effeminate artist who was more content with drawing than sports and spent his time reading comic books, his favorite being 2000 AD.
So when his father began berating him from an early age Brendan took refuge in these larger-than-life heroes and began lifting weights to become totally in control of his physicality. To Brendan, “body building is an art.”
Although Brendan claims he is not necessarily conscious of any comic book influence on his work, he admits he is still attracted to the concept of Superman and other heroes because there is something in the “notion of elevation of character, of ideals, and of morality” that is made apparent in their outward appearance.
This subconsciously manifests in his obsession with iconography and fixation with exploring cultural icons, which are also symbols that transcend their physical image to represent a larger social concept. This serves as a central theme for much of Brendan’s cannon and his subversive art frequently uses famous icons like Mao Zedong and Robin Williams as well as cultural symbols as cute as candy and as heavy handed as dollar bills.
Yet, just like any origin story about a hero overcoming internal struggle, Brendan could have easily become the very villain to his own success. “I was a sh*t when I was a kid” he says with a wink as he relives a past full of parties, raves, and wasted youth spent shoplifting and doing graffiti (among other recreational activities).
Ironically, in Vancouver Brendan occasionally appeared as a henchman for Superman’s nemesis Lex Luther on the hit ABC show Small Ville, a story about a young Clark Kent learning to harness his powers, and was even offered a part as Dr. Manhattan’s body double for The Watchmen.
Despite being 47 years old, there is still a mischievous and entirely youthful element to Brendan’s demeanor that continues to live within his artistic expression, and everything from his font choices to his public murals harken back to the influence of his younger years spent doing petty crime, graffiti, and hosting illegal raves in his Eastbourne.
He was even one of the first people to find the house that was later used to host legendary DOJO parties in Chengdu, but was mainly involved behind the scenes.
The Meaning of Life's Symbols
Just like a rebellious teenager who tests the boundaries of authority to find his place in society, Brendan’s work deliberately uses pop-imagery as props to interrogate his audience for a reaction.
In doing so, his goal is to make people rethink their involvement and responsibility for our collective reality, and hopes to push people to “honestly frame where they stand in relation to themselves, to other people, and to other people’s perception of them and social constructs.” Our perceptions are subjective, but our common reality is a shared responsibility. After all, the power of images and icons are only powerful because we choose to make them so.
▲工作室的一角
From spray paint to screen printing, Brendan is incredibly attentive to how the meaning of modern iconography is projected through the mediums he chooses to experiment with, and his art seems to straddle that angsty space between cliché observations and profound revelations. Yet, this also makes it easy to dismiss his work as simple pop art or fodder for Instagram. When I confront him with this observation, he welcomes this surface level interpretation of his art.
“I want my work to be accessible... but I am still chasing down my own avenues.”
Brendan is a prolific thinker and keeps a journal with him wherever he goes.
“I’m really in the process of thought more than I’m in the process of making art.” Brendan says. “And I have to qualify everything I do on that basis. If there’s no psychology behind it, and if there aren’t multiple perspectives to be found within the work I’m making, I’m not making it.”
For this reason, even his most seemingly simple pieces are vastly reflexive in some way. An example of his creative, over contemplative process can be observed on his Instagram @HZWerkz and in one of his latest works titled Mr. Jolly.
▲ Mr. Jolly
100 cm x 150
screen print acrylic on linen canvass
Mr. Jolly emerged as an exercise in creative constraint in which Brendan kept a journal of all his profane and mundane thoughts for over a year, then intentionally boiled down his observations into 5 word pieces of prose, such as:
“Artist Makes Witty Derogatory Iconoclasm.”
Before heading into the studio that morning, an image of a Mao Zedong covered in scaffolding popped into his head and like a “hit from creative crack,” Brendan decided to add this last-minute inspiration. Thus, the concept of Mr. Jolly was born. However, as Brendan actually began to physically paint the words on canvass, his hand slipped in the process of screen-printing… and his piece was ruined.
FEEL THE PAIN AND LAUGH
“The imperfections give me a new idea while I’m in the process of creating a piece. And if it takes some accidental detour, well now I have a new direction or path of thought that I didn’t have before, and that’s really appealing.”
Finding Your Own Path in Life
Throughout the interview Brendan seemed to confess time and time again that his life has been full of accidents turned fortunate circumstance, from his foray into construction to his time spent in Chengdu, and I begin to get the sense that mistakes are only a matter of perspective for him.
The very process of screen-printing is full of unpredictable circumstances because like life and like paper, it is temporary by its very nature and at any time there is a risk that it can be damaged or destroyed.
"From an artistic aesthetic standpoint, that’s a gamble”
“Any minute, any second, I can f*ck up the entire piece, but I’ll take that risk anyway.” Ultimately, it’s how we view our decisions and mishaps that shape our direction, and for this reason, Brendan isn’t afraid to walk away once more from Chengdu and find a new path somewhere else in the world.
When asked what his plans are next, Brendan pensively sums up his entire philosophy to bodybuilding, life, and art. “I’m immersed in the thought process of going after something. I’m chasing a perfection that I will never get to, but I am really, really, really content with being in the process.”
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