Thorsten Brinkmann
12/07/2008 t/m 05/10/2008
The career of German artist Thorsten Brinkmann (b. Stuttgart, 1971) is an imaginative patchwork of painting, photography, sculpture, readymades, collage and performance art. The GEM now presents his first ever Dutch solo exhibition, including a large installation being specially created by Brinkmann for this exhibition – an absurd interior created out of old carpet, wallpaper, furniture, rugs, vases and photographs of himself.
Thorsten Brinkmann is a collector through and through. In his home city of Hamburg he has a large shed completely full of found objects. It includes all the things you’d expect to find at a flea market: discarded wardrobes, lampshades, side-tables, clothes – all the rubbish of civilisation. Brinkmann delves into its contents to create his installations, sculptures, videos and photographs; by doing so, he subtly draws attention to the superficial and careless way in which our present-day society deals with physical objects.
Each of his photographic self-portraits shows him masked and costumed in a different way. He may pull second-hand clothing over his head, cover his head with a lampshade or flowerpot, or conceal his face behind the open case of a tennis racket. Using bits and pieces from his storehouse, he turns his own body into a constantly changing and ever novel representation of himself. The pictures are, as it were, photographed sculptures of ‘the self’ and give a new meaning to traditional genres like painting and sculpture.
In addition to these portraits – which form part of the installation – the show at the GEM will include Brinkmann’s 2003 93 in Eins (Alles was in einen Bus passt) photo-series. When Brinkmann loaded up his Volkwagen minibus to transport a selection of objets trouvés to his studio with the intention of creating a photo-series, he found that these particular 93 objects fitted exactly into the load space. Brinkmann photographed them one at a time against a white background. By doing so, he endowed them – just as Marcel Duchamp did with his readymades – with a significance that they never had during their functional lives.
In the show at the GEM, the link with readymades like Duchamp’s urinal is still more clearly suggested in the presentation consisting of thirty everyday objects from the artist’s store, each mounted on its own plinth (likewise made of objet trouvés). In fact, Brinkmann always likes to refer to (usually recent) art history. For example, his photographic self-portraits are reminiscent of Cindy Sherman’s staged pictures of herself and his use of discarded objects in installations recalls the work of New Realists like Arman and Jean Tingueley. In each of his works, Brinkmann seems to be asking himself the same questions: how does the present relate to the past? How can genres be redefined? How can a dialogue be created between painting and other media? His oeuvre can be regarded as an adventurous quest to link genres, objects and periods of time.
In honour of the exhibition, Uitgeverij Hatje Cantz and KUNSTAGENTEN Gallery, Berlin are publishing a bilingual (German/English) catalogue, authored by Anette Hüsch and Matthias Harder (Price €35).
The artist has also produced a limited edition work of art (25 examples) for sale exclusively in the museum shop and via the webshop during this exhibition (Price €350).
The Gemeentemuseum already has several works by Brinkmann in its collection. In 2007 the artist created his Neoschwanstein installation especially for the museum’s DLD Collection exhibition.
