Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac opens Marc Brandenburg's exhibition Snowflake

The First Art Newspaper on the Net    Established in 1996 Tuesday, March 19, 2024


Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac opens Marc Brandenburg's exhibition Snowflake
Installation view. © Marc Brandenburg. Courtesy Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, London • Paris • Salzburg.



PARIS.- In the context of global protest movements, notably Black Lives Matter, Marc Brandenburg’s exhibition Snowflake addresses political and relational issues such as gender and ethnic differences, while embracing the urgent need for a radical change. Through his most recent series of drawings, he explores the conditions of life at the fringes of society.

The topics I’m dealing with now, I’ve been dealing with for the last 30 years. It might seem like the zeitgeist but shit has just been going backwards for way too long. That’s all. Enough! – Marc Brandenburg

The German and Afro-American artist has devoted himself to precisely those conditions that are increasingly becoming the object of hate and ridicule in our society, especially in the context of the events of recent months: the sensitive, the endangered, the traumatised, the lack of resistance, and the idea that every person is unique, regardless of their social status, gender or ethnic background.

Scenes from a protest march are presented alongside smaller images of faceless figures – masked, with heads bowed or fully covered. They are severed from their surroundings and appear cocooned or in free-fall amidst an expanse of undefined space. Marc Brandenburg’s figures and shapes reveal the fragility and potential homelessness of the human condition, which resonate particularly in the period of the health, social and economic global crises we are facing today.

With an oeuvre that encompasses drawing, photography, performance and installation, Marc Brandenburg's unique pencil drawings and his innovative modes of immersive display form a distinctive and acclaimed element of his practice. Inverting light and dark values, the resulting images radically expand the possibilities of drawing and function as springboards into strange parallel world(s), reduced to their fundamentals and freed from explicit social or political narrative.




Born in 1965 in Berlin, where he now lives and works, Marc Brandenburg grew up in Texas and Germany. Self-taught, he draws from a range of sources, including film, literature, urban cultures of the mid-twentieth century, activism and social segregation to consider themes of nonconformity, performance, difference and isolation. Taking long walks through the cities of Berlin and Barcelona, the artist photographs the people, groups and scenes he encounters, which he then isolates from their surroundings and develops inverted, transposing black for white, before completing his pencil reproductions with meticulous attention to detail and form.

Marc Brandenburg’s negative-reversed black-and-white drawings thematise the vision of a broken, violent society in which people are increasingly socially isolated, suffering mental illness and addiction. – Oliver Koerner von Gustorf (writer & journalist), 2020

Through images of roles and bodies, of costumes and rituals, of elements outside the social norm, the artist explores a sense of transience and temporality. Depicting drug users, street performers and improvised shakedowns (or acts of bribery and extortion) as isolated and suspended moments, Brandenburg’s drawings freeze otherwise fleeting scenes in a state of permanence. Referencing Chuck Palahniuk’s 1996 novel Fight Club in the exhibition's title, Snowflake evokes the topics he addresses – the white of the paper, the idea of drawing as crystallisation and the act of arresting time – and is embodied in the practices of representation and display that inform the exhibition. It alludes to the word’s use in increasingly divided societies as a metaphorical insult, employed by and aimed at varying political, social and generational groups since it was first coined by Palahniuk over 50 years ago.

Coalescing the motif of the snowflake with his subject matter, the artist invites visitors to consider the experience of homelessness, understood both literally and as the absence of self or the loss of control – a ‘mythic’ homelessness. As with the development of the term ‘snowflake’ – its descriptive function and ever-changing social construct – Brandenburg’s figures are presented not as individual identities, but as signifiers of socially constructed groupings. Lacking backgrounds, features or facial expressions, they become objects awaiting imposed identities and narratives. Their anonymous status as empty signifiers calls into question broader considerations of both embedded stereotyping and its inherent subjectivity.

Only the form, the surface remains, at once material and psychological, often stretched or distorted … Marc Brandenburg’s pictures subtly examine the ways in which bodies move in urban public space, posing questions about power, class and territory … in their poetic radicality, these pictures are embedded in a long subversive tradition … They insistently embody that very sensibility which causes every snowflake-hater to cringe. – Oliver Koerner von Gustorf, 2020

Marc Brandenburg (b. 1965) lives and works in Berlin. With a practice that traverses drawing, photography, performance, film and installation, he first came to prominence during the 1990s with his distinctive graphite drawings. Working from his own photographs, Brandenburg isolates figures or fragments of his surroundings – public demonstrations, football fans, fairgrounds and portraits of friends or relatives – and delicately transfers them into graphite through a process of reversal akin to photographic negatives. Presented under black light, the finished pieces take on an unsettlingly threatening effect. The artist has exhibited internationally and has works represented in collections worldwide, including The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Deutsche Bank, Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin; Hamburger Kunsthalle; Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; Kupferstich-Kabinett, Dresden; Städtische Galerie Wolfsburg; and Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt. In 2019, he was selected for the Unlimited section of Art Basel, Switzerland, curated by Gianni Jetzer, with his series Camouflage Pullovers. Recent solo exhibitions include Kunstraum Potsdam (2018); Kunsthaus Stade (2015), Städtische Galerie Wolfsburg (2012); Hamburger Kunsthalle (2011); and Denver Art Museum (2010).










Today's News

July 5, 2020

Paris Louvre museum reopens Monday after crippling losses

New and recent work by Marcel Dzama on view at David Zwirner's gallery in Paris

France returns skulls of Algerians who fought colonisation

In Canada, art lovers head to drive-in for safe Van Gogh show

Unseen collection of European Avant-Garde art to make auction debut

New book offers a journey through Vincent van Gogh's favourite authors and illustrators

Duchess Goldblatt is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside a Twitter account

UK film pioneer Earl Cameron dies aged 102

The exhibition 18th century - Sweden and Europe opens at Nationalmuseum Jamtli

UK historian quits Cambridge over slavery claim

Custodians for Covid: Photography prints sold to support London theatres

From the photographic act to the possibilities of presentation: The fundamental conditions of photography in new book

Democracy books disappear from Hong Kong libraries

House of Spirits sign saved from vandalism for future generations of Echo Park residents

Marc Fumaroli, defender of French culture, is dead at 88

Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac opens Marc Brandenburg's exhibition Snowflake

Movie posters never seen or sold, from Frankenstein to Sunrise, star in Heritage Auctions' July 25-26 event

Art reopens King's Cross: Andy Leek lands 3 month artistic residency to welcome back visitors

Shortlist announced for 2020 Film London Jarman Award

Exhibition features selected works from 20 years of Galerie Priska Pasquer

Rudolfo Anaya, a father of Chicano literature, dies at 82

'Liberty Bell' tolls for sites where history is alive and kicking

New site-specific work by Lita Albuquerque on view at The Huntington

Magnum Photos announces new nominees, associates and life-long members

Everything You Need To Know About ED Drugs In A Nutshell

WoW boosting service and BFA-2020 updated




Museums, Exhibits, Artists, Milestones, Digital Art, Architecture, Photography,
Photographers, Special Photos, Special Reports, Featured Stories, Auctions, Art Fairs,
Anecdotes, Art Quiz, Education, Mythology, 3D Images, Last Week, .

 



Founder:
Ignacio Villarreal
(1941 - 2019)
Editor & Publisher: Jose Villarreal
Art Director: Juan José Sepúlveda Ramírez

sa gaming free credit
Attorneys
Truck Accident Attorneys
Accident Attorneys

Royalville Communications, Inc
produces:

ignaciovillarreal.org juncodelavega.com facundocabral-elfinal.org
Founder's Site. Hommage
to a Mexican poet.
Hommage
       

The First Art Newspaper on the Net. The Best Versions Of Ave Maria Song Junco de la Vega Site Ignacio Villarreal Site Parroquia Natividad del Señor
Tell a Friend
Dear User, please complete the form below in order to recommend the Artdaily newsletter to someone you know.
Please complete all fields marked *.
Sending Mail
Sending Successful