Georg Brückmann

Archaeology on site is all about reinstating objects in their present condition to something of their potential, even of their aspirations originally revealed in the archaic context. What was simply in existence until the present-day can now become tangible with the full impact of its different layers. The technical term for this is “in situ”.

The three component parts of my degree – the book, research studies and framed photographs – are united by the endeavour to make visible what is otherwise embedded in our habitual perception and always implicitly conveyed, yet without explicit reference. Two distinct dimensions can therefore be related to each other – the cube and the sphere, painting and photography, my atelier and a place of modernity that is present within the collective image memory; or the object and its ideal counter-image, its aspiration and its dream. Location and an observation point for defining objects each govern our expectations and, in turn, their constituent parts are also the spatial position of things and situation to which they owe their existence. Like layers, these two original places are inherent to things, intervening between them.

For example, you could say that a plastic chair and its form is and shall remain a chair made of plastic. This is true unless the object of the picture, which only recently offered practical seating or was a zebra crossing, is now represented in an unexpected context. Despite manifold overlaps, this context still remains intrinsically bound to the object. This element of coincidence – the layered reference point – is also the nexus, where the image of an object threatens to turn the other way. With an about turn, expectation is disappointed and experience begins. Here, the object becomes what it could have been, and what it might be, and even aspired or should have aspired to be.

On the ‘Kundmanngasse 19’ series:

In 1925 Margarethe Stonborough Wittgenstein commissioned the architect Paul Engelmann to construct a representative urban mansion in Vienna. In 1926 her brother, the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, became involved in the design process and assumed responsibility for most of the planning.
After almost four years of construction, in late 1928 Margarethe, her family and numerous servants took up residency in Haus Wittgenstein. Virtually every major and minor figure of the Viennese cultural scene at the time were guests of hers at some point. With the exception of a 7-year exile in the United States, Margarethe would live in Haus Wittgenstein until her death in 1958. Ludwig Wittgenstein planned the construction of the house between the composition of his two main philosophical works, the theories of which are unmistakably recognizable in the architecture. The Haus Wittgenstein is in this sense an architectural manifestation of his philosophy.

Grants / Awards:

2016 Artists support from the Heussenstamm Foundation, Frankfurt/Main
2015 Otto Steinert Award

2013 Scholarship Stiftung Kunstfonds Bonn
2011 – 2012 Scholarship Trustee-Program Else-Heiliger-Fonds Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung
2009 gute_aussichten – jung german Fotografie
2008 HGB Award (Studienpreis)
2007 Welde Award
2007 Nomination for Plat(t)form 07 Photomuseum Winterthur
2006 Kodak Young Talent Award