THORSTEN BRINKMANN - EXTRACTS
30 OCT - 4 DEC 2010
OPENING 30 OCT, 2 - 7 pm
Thorsten Brinkmann was born in Herne, Germany in 1971. He graduated with an MFA in Fine Arts in Hamburg where he lives and works. After his solo exhibitions Studiomove, Kolbe Museum, Berlin, 2010; GEM Museum voor Actuelle Kunst, The Hague 2008 and his participation in Dresscode, ICP New York, International Video and Fototrienale in NYC, USA 2009 Elisa Platteau Galerie is pleased to present Thorsten Brinkmann first major solo exhibition in Brussels called Extracts.
“The still young but highly independent and unconventional work by Thorsten Brinkmann moves between the genres of photography, sculpture, performance and installation art. Photographic self-dramatisation, in which the artist functions as an actor, director and photographer in one, and creates images in the solitude of his studio with a self-timer, is one of his areas of focus. Wrapped up in used clothing and found objects from everyday life, he transforms himself into anonymous, sometimes androgynous figures that appear as objects – sculptural figures – that allude to compositions by old masters. The photographs are part of the long tradition of self-portraits by artists, but he practically explodes the accompanying myths by hiding his countenance and emptying them of any recognisable individuality. In them, Thorsten Brinkmann explores the boundaries of the relationship of people and their bodies to the world of objects. In the process, he builds upon the tension between object and subject as influenced by imagination. Everything in these photos is real and fictional at the same time. Formerly soulless things develop their own lives on the artist‘s body and become prostheses and masks with puzzling, physiognomic powers of expression.
In addition to his photographic self-dramatisations, Brinkmann‘s work includes objects that are combinations of various found objects. Their subject: bases for sculptural works. He creates sculpturally arranged ready-mades and photographic still lives whose compositions also make references to art history. A new series of works combines ready-made sculptures with casts made from the artist‘s body parts – some of which wear his clothing. In the context of larger exhibitions, he surrounds the photos and objects with an installation-like environment consisting of carpets, patterned wallpaper, veneered tabletops and various other pieces of furniture. The visitors are in the same setting as the figures in the photographs, and some of the props in the photos may exist in the exhibition environment.
Within an art-historical context, the joy Brinkmann finds in pretence and disguising his body with objects is a continuation of Hugo Ball‘s Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich or Oskar Schlemmer‘s costumes for the ‚Triadic Ballet‘. When it comes to crossovers between the world of fashion and pop culture, parallels to legendary Australian performance artist and fashion designer Leigh Bowery (1961-94) can also be drawn. Bowery‘s shrill disguises left their mark on the London fashion scene of the 1980s. Brinkmann‘s photographic dramatisation of objects – as also recorded in several videos – is reminiscent of the archaic humour of Buster Keaton or Monty Python, in the way in which the moment is captured as a slapstick performance.
Thorsten Brinkmann has acquired a significant collection of things from dustbins, flea markets and second-hand shops in the past few years: the detritus of our civilisation. He stores it all on ceiling-high shelving in his studio in Hamburg and draws on it for his self-dramatisations, sculptures and installations. The conceptional starting point of the exhibition in the Georg Kolbe Museum is the removal of part of Brinkmann‘s object and clothing collection to Georg Kolbe‘s former studio as a spatial installation. ‚Studiomove‘ signifies the removal of Brinkmann and part of his studio full of objects and clothing to Berlin in the Georg Kolbe museum, and also describes the perpetual movement of objects within the studio and the movements of the artist /objects as the main motif of his work.“
Marc Wellmann
Georg-Kolbe-Museum, Berlin
Public Collections
Brinkmann’s work has been included in many public collections, most significantly Mont Blanc Collection, Germany - Gemeentemuseum Den Haag, Netherlands - Museum der Moderne Salzburg, Austria - Fotomuseum Winterthur, Switzerland & Collection Caron, France - …
For further inquiries please contact the gallery at info@elisaplatteau.com or +32 485 14 23 65
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Exhibition view 'Thorsten Brinkmann - Extracts', Elisa Platteau Galerie, Brussels, 2010.
