“Deadstock explores what it means to ‘fit in’ societally through branded items and consumer culture, and where we place value and cultural capital.” – Izaak Brandt
Kick off Art Basel Miami last December, artist and breakdancer Izaak Brandt assembled a web-like installation of manually hand-created skeletal white “shoes,” which served as the backdrop for an energized breakdancing performance. The piece served as a comment on consumerism and our relationship to our belongings.
Brandt, who was recently selected as one of the artists to collaborate with Louis Vuitton on their LV200 project, is the latest subject in our Sarabande series, which profiles the artists and designers sponsored by the Sarabande Foundation, founded by the late Alexander McQueen and spearheaded by the doyenne of emerging talent, Trino Verkade.
Below, Brandt gets candid on how his childhood spent breakdancing paved the way for his latest sneaker project, how he marries performance with sculpture, and how Sarabande served as a “ray of hope” for the artist amid the pandemic.
Juno Kelly: Hype culture has taken over the sneaker industry. What comment is ‘Deadstock’ attempting to make about the sneaker-sphere?
Izaak Brandt: Sneaker culture has always been of great fascination to me. I have always been obsessed with shoes, since I was a kid through Skateboarding. When I found breaking [breakdancing in cool kid parlance] at 12 years old, I related heavily to the idea that sneakers were a part of your performative costume. Superman had a cape, us breakers had the flyest kicks. Contrary to its title Deadstock as a series explores ideas around collecting and preservation – extending from victorian curiosity cabinets etc, what it means to ‘fit in’ societally through branded items and consumer culture, and where we place value and cultural capital.
JK: What was the process behind creating the shoes for Deadstock?
IB: Each shoe sculpture is hand drawn out of PLA, the same material you would find in a 3D printer, but its hand drawn with a 3D pen, making each sculpture completely unique.
JK: You recently created a pillar sculpture for the Louis200 project, how did the project come about?
IB: Faye McLeod, visual image director at Louis Vuitton, reached out to me and invited me to be one of the artists to contribute to the LV200 project, celebrating 200 years of the brand’s history.
JK: As a breakdancer, how do you utilize breakdancing as a form of performance art?
IB: As a practicing and competitive breaker, I have been thinking about ways to reframe breaking for a long time. The medium is usually just found in the context of battles and shows but I have always wanted to conceptualize the movement form and figure out ways to use it to explore wider themes, just like contemporary dance is able to do. I am always playing with ways in which to utilize breaking for performance art possibilities, one example is my Backspin Drawings series.
JK: How did you start working with Sarabande?
IB: I was offered a place on Sarabande’s residency program in 2020. Whilst traversing through the difficult time of the pandemic and all the strain that that caused, Sarabande was a real ray of hope for me.
JK: Can you explain the concept behind your installation and performance at Art Basel Miami?
IB: My Art Basel Miami installation was a really fun way of exploring monumentalising performance into a static sculptural form, what our collected ‘stuff’ means to us, and a playful, sculptural extension of — and dialogue with — Eadweard Muybridge’s photographic ideas around static movement.
JK: What are you working on now?
IB: I’m currently developing a brand new body of work for solo shows, potential projects in Korea and New York, and a series of performance films for both myself and a media campaign for my father, the legendary musician Pete Brandt.
Images courtesy of Sarabande.
