Life
During his lif
etime, South African-born Canadian artist Roland Brener was one of the most fearless, innovative sculptors and influential educators in Canada. He worked as an artist for 40 years, and produced an enduring body of work that is in major collections across Canada, including the National Gallery of Canada, Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, the Art Gallery of Ontario and the Vancouver Art Gallery.
He represented Canada at the Venice Biennale in 1988, with Montreal artist Michel Goulet. He also was a representative at the Bienal Internacional de São Paulo, 1987. More recently, Brener exhibited Swinger at Deitch Projects (2000) in New York, and in Part Two, a two-man exhibition with Mowry Baden, at the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria (2006). His public sculpture Radioville, a re-working of his earlier sculptures Endsville and Capital Z, was installed in 2005 at Radio City, a condominium development built on the site of the old CBC radio-antenna tower in downtown Toronto. He has been represented by Olga Korper Gallery, Toronto, since 1987. Since his death, his work has been shown in numerous exhibitions and a major retrospective is planned.
He began his art career in 1965 in London, studying with the late Sir Anthony Caro at St. Martin’s School of Art. He then taught at St. Martin’s, the University of California, Santa Barbara, and the University of Iowa, before becoming an associate professor at the University of Victoria in British Columbia in 1973. He retired as a full professor in 1998 after 25 years of teaching, and continued to live and work in Victoria until his death from cancer in 2006. He was also an avid sailor and adventurer. His daughter Amy Brener is now a sculptor in New York.
Art
” My hope is that all my art, whatever medium, expresses a feeling of common humanity towards others.” Roland Brener
Whether working with the computer, or other technologies, mechanics or construction techniques, and with any variety of materials, Brener worked fluidly and intuitively, unafraid to reject, remake or reinterpret his own inventions. This reflected the formalist training of his education under Caro at St. Martin’s School of Art in the 1960’s, but he was using found materials and objects, conceptual content, context and installation, and any other forms that he felt compelled to explore. Though deeply interested in formalism. almost immediately he found pure formalist abstract art too limiting for him. He found inspiration from the world around him- popular culture and social and political issues, technology, art, music, literature, film, sailing, news and sports on television, or his interest in African, First Nations, and Latin American culture; he could weave any of these inspirations into his work to take unique and unexpected form.
Brener was a prolific artist, with a critical eye. He would reject as many works as he kept; he never quit working. When he left England for America in 1970, his first actions were to buy the newly invented Sony Portapack Video Camera and a fog machine that atomized water. He created installations and environments until the late 70’s which had strong conceptual elements that questioned high art notions and values. During the 1980s his work shifted back to the sculptural object, as he began to incorporate consumer items, often toys such as talking telephones, barking dogs and Teddy Ruxpin, and experiment with kinetic sculpture driven by electronic motors or computers. In the 1990’s he began to use the computer as a design tool to produce fantastical distortions of stock digital images and objects which were then fabricated in wood or synthetic materials. Some of his work in the last decade of his life began to incorporate autobiography, referencing illness and death, as well as domesticity, family, and memories of South Africa. There is a trove of writing on Brener’s work, by noted critics and curators, who loved to write about his work. Brener made work that was dynamic and complex enough for the sophisticated critic, but also accessible and meaningful to a broader audience.
Early Life and Influences
The second son of Jewish parents Ida Rubin and Manfred Reichmann, he was born in Johannesburg, South Africa and grew up with his older brother Jasper in Durban, where their father managed a small family hotel. After Manfred died from cancer when Roland was only 6, the boys went to boarding school so their mother could work. Eventually she married Leo Brener and moved to Johannesburg with the family. The relationship between the boys and their stepfather was very difficult, although in later years a good relationship was forged. Ida and Leo had 2 children together, William and Zoe. After Ida changed the boys surname to Brener they were disinherited by their paternal Grandmother, though later their remaining uncle Dan Reichmann, a barrister, worked to reinstate them, after conflicting copies of wills were found.
Brener was a poor student at school, primarily due to poor eyesight and a highly developed imagination. While his brother and most of his contemporaries went to University, he went to Israel in 1960 to escape conscription in the South African army. But after initially going to do farming on a kibbutz, he was drafted into the Israeli army, and volunteered for the paratroopers. Many of Brener’s political and social attitudes were formed during these early years, as Ida’s sister, Sarah and her husband, Fred Carneson, were anti-apartheid activists, who dedicated their lives to fighting the injustices of the South African system. Most of his Jewish contemporaries were liberals and supporters of civil rights and the anti-apartheid movement. And though supportive of Israel, his experience living there made him question the status and treatment of the Palestinian people. His own treatment in the Army created some negative attitudes toward the harshness of the Israeli military. Fairness and justice became a hallmark of his political attitudes.
Education
Encouraged by a cousin, Brener arrived in London, at St. Martin’s College of Art, in 1964 amid an exciting time of artistic innovation and social change. Studying with Caro, then one of the most important sculptors in the world, he began making sculpture during this vibrant and experimental era. Brener was surrounded by a diverse community of teachers and students, including Philip King, Peter Hide, Roelof Louw, David Annesley, Richard Long, Bruce McLean, Barry Flanagan, Gilbert and George, and Bill Woodrow. Against this backdrop, in 1967, he and fellow sculptor Peter Hide converted a derelict warehouse at Stockwell Depot, South London, to use as studios and for artist run exhibitions. Stockwell Depot shows received considerable attention from newspapers and art periodicals for creating dynamic shows, circumventing the gallery system, and taking art out of the conventional setting. His educational experience at St. Martin’s provided a strong framework for critical and creative thinking. And because formalism represented a clear break from past traditions in British sculpture, it gave a new generation of artists permission to do the same. The doctrine of absolutes could provide fertile ground for a rebellious generation and it did.
In other regards, Brener, like his mother Ida, was an avid reader of literature, which was certainly a strong factor in his self-education. He read the major Russian writers, from Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky to Gorky and Nabokov, extensive modern fiction and non-fiction from writers around the globe such as V.S. Naipaul, Patrick White, Nadine Gordimer; philosophers such as Karl Popper and works of art and literary criticism. Literature was a tremendous influence on his life and art.
He brother, Dr. Jasper Brener, a professor of neurophysiology and an early developer of computer use in his field, introduced him to the computer in the 1980’s. He then taught himself programs to use in his own work, in his own way. Photoshop, final cut pro, 3-D modeling, sound and design programs all became his working tools.
Teaching
After settling in Victoria, Brener would contribute to a more vibrant visual arts department, by attracting new faculty, attracting attention to the department, developing an MFA program that welcomed international applicants, strengthening the BFA program with stimulating and rigorous critiques, expanding the visiting artists programme. and introducing the digital media course. He would revitalize the sculpture area by bringing in Mowry Baden his second year in Victoria, and the sculpture department would become one of the top in Canada. Other collegues would include Fred Douglas and Robert Youds, Sandra Meigs, and Daniel Laskarin. Some notable University of Victoria visual art students included James Carl, Diana Burgoyne, Alan Storey, Barbara Fischer, Bill Burns, Kim Adams, Jessica Stockholder, Yoko Takashima, Erin Shirreff, Kevin Mutch, and the late Colette Urban. Charles Ray studied with Brener at the University of Iowa in 1972-73, but also came to Victoria for several months in 1975 to work and sail with Brener.
Personal Life
Brener and his wife Dama Hanks met and began sailing in 1970 in California. They owned several boats before commissioning “Reality”, custom built by master wooden boat builder Bent Jespersen, in Sidney, BC, in 1979. They sailed extensively before and after their daughter Amy was born in 1982, sailing to Tahiti when Amy was only 4. A close-knit family, their travels also took them to Hawaii, Mexico, Central America, Columbia and Cuba, among other places. They also loved the coastal waters of British Columbia, after racing and cruising there for 30 years. Dama is a retired teacher; Amy completed an MFA in sculpture from Hunter College, NYC. in 2010 and is now living and working as an artist in NY. Brener remained close to his brother Jasper and wife Rosie throughout his life; his parents predeceased him after they had immigrated to Australia, where his brother William continues to live. ( Zoe died in 1970 in a car accident. ) He had great respect and fondness for his South African relatives, the Carnesons, who had returned to South Africa after years of exile, and he was dreaming of a reunion with Aunt Sarah and his cousins the year he died. ( Uncle Fred has passed away in 2000 and was widely eulogized as a freedom fighter, but Brener also remembered him taking him fishing as a boy in Capetown. ) He also was close to his niece Yolande, and her children, as well as Dama’s family, the Hanks of California, Florida and Colorado.
Brener had a strong community of friends over the years, his closest were artists Mowry Baden, Robert Youds, and Grant Watson ( who also was his assistant and fabricator for many works ), but also Charles Ray, Greg Snider, Peter Hide, Yoko Takashima, and the late Fred Douglas. Other friends included artists, colleagues, curators and collaborators- Christine Toller, Judith McDowell, Jeanne Shoemaker, Sandra Meigs, Daniel Laskarin, Liz Magor, James Carl, Olga Korper, Willard Holmes, Lisa Baldessera, the late Bob Wise, Kevin Mutch, Ben Portis, Jung-ah Chung, Bruce Ferguson and Claire Christie just to name a few. Other long term close friends included Ron Michaelson and Lucinda Cowell, of California, and the late Steve Cortright, friends from 1970 Santa Barbara days; David Winter and Stephen Davis of New York, and Dr. Cliff Moore of Minnesota. He also maintained many friendships from the sailing community, and from his neighborhood of Fairfield where he lived for 20 years, and many amazing friends met along the way cruising off-shore and traveling to other countries.
Brener suffered a serious motorcycle accident in 1990, which required skin grafts and orthopedic surgery to rebuild a shattered ankle, but he recovered well after a lengthy rehabilitation. In 1998 he was diagnosed with testicular lymphoma which then presented in the brain, several months later. Palliative radiation was administered but his prognosis was grim. The doctors were amazed when the brain tumor completely disappeared in MRI’s and Roland made a complete recovery. Then after 7 years, symptoms suddenly returned and an MRI revealed a brain tumor deep in the brain. Treatment proved ineffective and he died 6 weeks later. During all these life-threatening challenges, he remained brave and optimistic. His final illness came just after the opening of an extensive 2-man show with Baden, at the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, in January, 2006; it served as a perfect survey of and tribute to a 40 year career as an artist, along side his friend and colleague of 30 years, Mowry Baden.
curriculum vitae