Thorsten Brinkmann
Kaffee dü Welt
08.03. – 21.04.2013

Thorsten Brinkmann is an artist from Hamburg whose work has become remarkably popular in recent years. Born in 1971 in Herne, Westphalia, he studied from 1997 to 2004 at the University of the Arts in Hamburg under Bernhard Johannes Blume and Franz Erhard Walther. During this time he received his first awards and his works were presented in group and solo exhibitions.

His work initially focused on photographs and films. The visual content of his early works is the entanglement of the human body with an object, a piece of furniture, in an incomprehensible way. While the influence of his professor Bernhard Blume is still evident in these series, classic art-historical themes such as portraits or still lifes became the subject of the images. In them, the artist is depicted in a historical pose using found materials, fabrics or clothing, with his face remaining hidden. The focus is more on the collage of an existing or at least possibly existing image made from bulky waste, from the surprising use of discarded and/or deformed, broken everyday materials. Titles with a historical feel promote the art-historical references. With this imaginative repurposing, Thorsten Brinkmann brings the rubbish back into a dignified form, in which the banality of the things used also contrasts with the significance of the art-historical references.

In recent years, the artist has expanded his work to the exhibition space through the collage-like extension of the picture frames of his photographic works and the background of the picture. In an exhibition for the Griffelkunstvereinigung in Hamburg in 2011, a presentation that was initially planned as a wall or corner installation finally became a complete spatial installation, the installation of a cinema hall. Just as in his photo motifs, the artist used found objects, old wallpaper, wall fragments and fabrics. The reference to the location has thus taken on an increasingly important role in his work. But while in this installation of the cinema hall the original exhibition space is completely built over, in his other exhibitions Thorsten Brinkmann increasingly focuses on local conditions, some of which remain visible. The exhibition “Extradosis”, which also took place in 2011 at the Kunsthalle Kiel, consisted exclusively of subtle interventions, installations or photographic duplications that referred to the works on display in the collection.

At the Kunsthalle Bremerhaven, too, the artist will address the special circumstances of the location and combine new elements with older installations, photographs and film.

Curated by Dr. Kai Kähler.