Marc Brandenburg at the Berlinische Gallery Exhibition Review
By Nisha Merit
“I have always wanted to be like Mary Poppins” says Marc Brandenburg as we walk through his exhibition – 20th Century Debris at the Berlinische Galerie. The magical nanny who swoops in with her umbrella to care for the neglected children of the wealthy, work-obsessed Banks family teaches them to prioritise love and joy over money and rigidity. She features in a video by the Berlin artist. While the metaphor is difficult to reconcile with Brandenburg’s artistic journey, it feels fitting in a personal way. He repeatedly mentions friends at the center of his works – some still close, others estranged – as we move through the exhibition, suggesting a care for the people and memories woven into his pencil drawings, which he began in the 1990s.
In his soft-flowing camouflage suit and the so-Berlin Jutebeutel – an old-school type without branding or signage – he does not offer neatly packaged explanations of his work. This does not seem to stem from an inability to describe or share insight, but rather from the difficulty of articulating deeply personal relationships – where does one begin to unpack something that is, by nature, non-linear? This feeling runs through the entire exhibition for me, and it suggests that if the impetus for art-making comes from within – from an urgency to express – then idea of presentation and mediation becomes a secondary task.
Since the early 1990s, a core of his visual references has been his immediate surroundings – his home, friends, and culturally significant moments and figures. Through the process of drawing, photo snapshots are translated into monochromatic, intricate works on paper, creating a sense of distance. Images appear as dreamlike remembrances, with fading edges, close-ups and angles that evoke a feeling more than a fixed object. Working predominantly in small formats, Brandenburg explains that he never had a studio; he worked wherever he happened to be, and thus scale remained adaptable and portable.
What stands out in the presentation of these works – loaned from private and corporate collections – is their arrangement into thematic groupings. The soft transitions between seemingly random objects and explicit, intimate moments create a rhythm that feels particularly honest.
