Hyper-Palimpsest (Gold)
2020 Gold leaf, spray paint, vinyl on canvas 185 x 145 cm / 72 7/8 x 57 1/8 in
USD 100,000
Spanning – and sometimes combining – sculpture, video, painting, and drawing, Stefan Brüggemann’s work deploys text in conceptual installations rich with acerbic social critique and a post pop aesthetic. Born in Mexico City and working between Mexico and London, the artist’s oeuvre is characterized by an ironic conflation of Conceptualism and Minimalism. In this way, Brüggemann’s practice sits outside the canon of the conceptual artists practicing in the 1960s and 1970s, who sought dematerialisation and rejected the commercialisation of art.
Hyper-Palimpsest (Gold) is part of a larger body of work, made during the lockdown in 2020 that pulls from the artists existing Text Pieces. These laconic texts use the kind of language we most often encounter in our accelerated digital lives. Such set phrases have a semiotic character, like hazard signs, that evoke learned responses. The presentation of this language as shortened modern poems, offers a caustic perspective on that modernity, while the staccato rhythms of these sloganistic lines mirror the relentlessness of newsfeed culture.
Of the larger, painted 'OK OK' text disguised in the layers of the work, Brüggemann has said: “There is inherent uncertainty in the word ‘OK’ and seeing it in this context subverts our expectations – is it a symbol of acceptance or resignation or even hope? It can be ironic, it can be optimistic, it can be negative. It makes you think and doubt what is OK.”
Working with Gold leaf as the main medium in the works, Brüggemann speaks of how gold fluctuates between being an economic power and a spiritual power. These fluctuations during this time of uncertainty, question its real value.
Stefan Brüggemann was born in 1975 in Mexico City, and lives and works between Mexico City and London. Span¬ning – and sometimes combining – sculpture, video, painting, and drawing, Brüggemann’s work deploys text in conceptual installations rich with acerbic social critique and a post-pop aesthetic.
Inside the London home studio of Mexican-German artist Stefan Brüggemann, who shares his latest body of works in gold, created during isolation. These new works build on the artist’s series of Text Pieces—constructing a vocabulary of appropriated language from our increasingly digital lifestyles.