PRESS RELEASE
BRETT CHARLES SEILER: Timber
Feb 24 – Mar 20, 2021
BRETT CHARLES SEILER | TIMBER | 24 FEBRUARY – 20 MARCH 2021
‘Timber!’ is the call that echoes through the forest when a tree is going to fall after being cut. It is also the wood used to build houses. In his new solo exhibition, Timber, Brett Charles Seiler uses this term to wrestle with notions of masculinity, home and loss. Being autobiographical, this body of work reads as a personal diary of sorts – intimate moments and memories of a life, seen here as scribbled notes and painted snapshots.
Seiler’s familiar use of roof paint and bitumen, screws and wooden strips – common building materials – constructs out of his interconnected figures a home.
In Timber, pieces of pine hewn into limbs, weapons and symbols serve to act as poetic metaphors conveying the violence and sexuality of various masculinities. While the gallery space, painted black, becomes part of the narrative itself, the shadows of Seiler’s recognisably monochromatic work are lifted here and there with a leaf / school-board green and nude-pump pink. These bursts of colour hint at life beyond the conversational frame.
Based in Cape Town, Brett Charles Seiler was born in Zimbabwe in 1994. He graduated from the Ruth Prowse School of Art in Cape Town in 2015. He has exhibited his paintings, installation art and performance pieces around South Africa, including at the Zeitz MOCAA.
*Face masks are required and must be worn at all times when visiting the gallery
IMAGES BY MICHAEL HALL
