Thorsten Brinkmann

The Berlin Georg Kolbe Museum presents the first solo museum show in Germany of the Hamburg-based artist Thorsten Brinkmann (*1971). His still young but highly independent and unconventional work 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 recognizable 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. 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 civilization. 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 “Studiomoves” signifies the removal of Brinkmann and part of his studio full of objects within the studio and the movements of the artist/objects as the main motif of his work.