Marc Brandenburg’s 20th Century Debris
**** (Four out of five stars)
There’s something altogether weird about Marc Brandenburg’s retrospective 20th Century Debris. His painstakingly detailed pencil drawings of pop-cultural, pornographic and intimate images are inviting, but also aloof, impenetrable, never quite allowing you to get a foothold. Even when you think you’ve worked something out, Brandenburg’s work slips further away, abstracting, randomising, deforming. It feels like a punky ‘fuck you’ for wanting some easy insight. One of the most intriguing pencil series, From June to November, is also the oldest, dating from the 1990s and 2000s: a man in a checked suit, fingers at his chin; an emaciated Jesus on a crucifix; a bald man sitting on a bed, a plate of food in front of him; a naked woman walking through a summer meadow with a vaguely soft-porn-like aesthetic – not idealised, but careful, flat, detached. Brandenburg is known for gathering the visual cacophony of urban life: signs, bodies, interiors, pornographic images, magazine fragments. But the thing about revealing everything is that you’re not giving anything either. What’s the connection between these images, and why draw them so meticulously in pencil?
In the central room, it gets even more confusing. Ultraviolet light completely upends visual conventions. In two wall drawings, he inverts the tones of a domestic lamp with human figures on its ugly, decorative base, as if the drawing were a film negative. Videos of urban life play on loop. They’re an unpleasant watch, either dangling the threat of violence, mocking you or just ignoring you completely. As the exhibition goes on, the drawings become increasingly difficult to make out as he stretches and warps images. There’s only one way to view the art, and that’s on his terms. Yet he’s generous when he wants to be. In the last room, temporary tattoos are laid out in a vitrine, modelled on the wall by a vast, near-naked reclining man. On my first visit, I was trying to photograph him when a guy in a hat showing someone the vitrine, turned and flashed me a suspicious look. Of course, it was the artist himself, clearly not happy to be caught in the frame. For a second, I had forgotten who was in charge.
20th Century Debris is on at Berlinische Galerie through Sep 14, details
