Stephen Brandes’ work is part of unsettling programme at RHA

ARTIST Stephen Brandes’ monumental piece, ‘April 22nd — From the Last Travelogue of Albert Sitzfleisch’, dominates the foyer of the Royal Hibernian Academy. His show, part of the RHA’s autumn programme, is satiric, provocative, charming and unsettling.

‘April 22nd’ is the last in a series of six pieces, in keeping with Brandes’ recent, large, highly detailed drawings on floor vinyl. Each piece is a diary entry of the fictitious Sitzfleisch, who travels Europe. “He’s sort of a shady character,” says Brandes. “Albert Sitzfleisch is his name, which means ‘sitting flesh’. It’s the nickname Nietzsche gave to Marcel Proust, because he thought he was a lazy bastard. It comes from that idea of imagining the world from one place, interpreting the world that way. So it raises the question — is he travelling or is this his imagination?”

The landscapes through which Sitzfleisch moves, or imagines, are inventions of Brandes’, inspired by the landscape of Eastern Europe. Brandes, who was born in Wolverhampton but lives in Cork, has travelled Eastern Europe, following his grandmother’s route, in 1913, when she was escaping the pogroms in Romania.