Brecht Vandenbroucke

Brecht Vandenbroucke is a Flemish artist born in Veurne in 1986. He studied illustration at the Sint-Lukas University College of Art and Design and now works as an illustrator, painter, comic author, and filmmaker. He came from a family of mostly farmers, so art was not dinner conversation. Television and the characters on cereal boxes did that job instead, and the habit stuck.

His illustrative style draws from Disney cartoons, vintage journal comics, and contemporary Pop-Art artists, with influences including Mark Beyer, ATAK, Charlotte Salomon, Roland Topor, Henry Darger, David Shrigley, Daisuke Ichiba, and Glen Baxter. Vandenbroucke takes culture without a velvet rope: Pop and Underground sit on the same shelf. His acrylic paintings and comics keep a surrealist temperature while talking about art, economy, the working class, and racism, all with his own sense of humour.

His most significant comic work to date is the episodic narrative White Cube (2013), which began as a fanzine and is now available in hardcover. It features two nearly identical bald men with pink faces, whom Vandenbroucke calls the "aesthetics critics." These characters visit art exhibitions with gleeful buoyancy, making naïve and malicious comments about contemporary art, sometimes physically altering artworks or using Facebook thumbs-up to express opinions. Their behaviour extends into everyday life, leading to bizarre situations. The painted panels often manage without words, confining dialogue to sign language.

Vandenbroucke's work explores themes of popular culture, happiness, madness, surrealism, loneliness, death, and alienation. While serious issues underpin his subjects, he identifies fun as his central driving force. He is particularly interested in doubt and uses his creative process to open dialogue about existence. The artist lives and works in Antwerp.