Marc Brandenburg

20th Century Debris
Berlinische Galerie

Dialing up Contrasts, Turning Hierarchies on Their Head

Marc Brandenburg (b. Berlin, 1965; lives and works in Berlin and Barcelona) has won international acclaim as an outstanding graphic artist. His defining genre are pencil drawings after photographic sources, whose tonality he inverts as in photographic negatives. Brandenburg captures his sources as he travels the world or samples them from magazines, films, and books. The freehand translation of the inverted and distorted originals yields haunting and pensive renditions of the contemporary world. Brandenburg’s motifs originate from urban everyday life: protest marches, homeless people, snippets of subculture, but also portraits of celebrities that have become symbols of pop culture. His drawings grapple with society’s ills as well as the extravagance and consumerism that are concomitants of late capitalism. 

Released on occasion of Marc Brandenburg’s comprehensive retrospective at Berlinische Galerie, the publication gathers around 150 works, including recent drawings and rarely shown works from the 1990s as well as photographs and videos. With writings by Ilka Voermann, Thomas Love, Lynette Roth, and Franziska Ziegler.